flection. Then from some pocket of the bag, she
produced a powder-puff and a box of powdered rouge, applying them
with mechanical precision.

"S'pose he thought I looked tired," she muttered to herself as she
mounted the remaining flight of stairs.

The room was a bachelor's, but it showed discrimination. Everything
was in good taste--taste that was beyond her comprehension. She stood
there in the doorway and stared about her before she entered. She
thought the rush matting that covered the floor was cold; she thought
the oak furniture sombre. Without realizing the need for tact, she
said so.

"You want a woman in here," she said, thinking that she was paving
the way for herself--"to warm things up a bit--you know what I
mean--make things more cosy."

He put a chair out for her by the fire. It had a rush-bottomed seat
to it, and for the first few moments she worried about in it, trying
vainly to make herself comfortable.

"What would you do?" he asked quietly, filling a well-burnt pipe from
a tobacco-jar.

She took this as encouragement--jumped to it, as an animal to the
food above it.

"Do? Well, first of all I'd have a nice thick carpet." There was no
need to force the note of interest into her voice. She was already
absorbed with it. She confidently thought that she could impress him
with the comfort that she could bring into his life. Her eyes, quick
to grasp certain facts, had shown her that he lived alone. Long study
of men from certain standpoints had made that easy for her to
appreciate. This moment to her was as the gap in the wall of riders
before him is to the jockey; in that moment she saw clear down the
straight to the winning-post. She took it. Ten minutes before she
had not known where to turn. The race had seemed impossible. Two or
three times she had opened her reticule bag and counted the four
coppers that jingled within the pocket. She had had no dinner. No
music hall was possible to her with such capital. You know something
of life when you have only fourpence in the world and vice is the
only trade for which your hand has acquired any deftness.

"I pray God no man 'll offer me ten bob to-night," she had said to
another woman.

"Why?"

"Why? Gosh! I'd take it."

Here then, out of nowhere, in the dull impenetrable wall was torn
the gap through which she saw the chance, such a chance as she had
never been offered by the generosity of circumstance before. She
seized it--no hesitation--n