f fearsomely. "I do not care a
damn. I'm off!"

One o'clock found her in the West End, a shabby, thin-faced woman of
the suburbs, rubbing shoulders with scores of other women jostling
round the shop windows. All that she saw she longed for; but none of
it was she foolish enough to buy. Some cold prudence, an offshoot of
her curious anger of the morning which still lingered with her,
restrained. Unformed, but working in her mind, was the beginning of an
impression that during this coming year she had some definite course
to follow, plan to make; she felt, almost heroically, as if she were
going to salve herself from something she had not, till lately, before
her glass, dared to define. She saw that women, caught intricately in
the domestic toils, had a dreadful, hard, cunning battle to fight, and
she felt as if in some way she was just beginning to fight it, but
that it would tax her utmost resources. So she spent none of her money
on the fashionable trifles of a moment, which she saw behind the
plate-glass, but she gave herself a lunch.

Debating long where to go, she went to the Royal Red and had a little
table in an obscure corner behind a pillar, where she could see, but
was hardly seen, even if anyone had wanted to look at this woman,
apparently just one of a thousand suburban shoppers. She lingered long
at her table to get to the full the worth of her three-and-sixpence;
to watch the suave, gay women pass in and out, be fed and flattered
and entertained. The great furs laid across their slender shoulders,
the ephemeral corsages beneath, the hint of pearls on well-massaged
necks, the luring cock of a hat, the waft of a perfume that was yet
hardly so crude as definite perfume, all roused her hostility, her
fighting sense. Not a woman there knew what passed behind the pillar
in the breast and brain of the slim, shabby woman with the big eyes
and wan face; none knew how she hated and feared; none knew of her
prayers; none but would have smiled to hear that she even thought of
entering with them the arena of women. And had a man glanced once her
way he would not have glanced twice.

All this she knew; she was setting it down definitely in her mind,
like writing. When it was written she was willing to read it over and
over again till she had learned it by heart.

She had eaten an ice Neapolitaine with voluptuous pleasure and,
calling her waiter, ordered coffee and a cigarette.

She was not going yet.

It was a lo