emarks of hers, that owing to the need for economy and the
difficulty of finding taxis she now always walked to the Promenade on
dry nights, and that from a motive of self-respect she always took
the south side of Piccadilly and the south side of Coventry Street in
order to avoid the risk of ever being mistaken for something which she
was not.

It was a dry night, but very cloudy. Points of faint illumination,
mysteriously travelling across the heavens and revealing the
otherwise invisible cushioned surface of the clouds, alone showed that
searchlights were at their work of watching over the heedless town.
Entertainments had drawn in the people from the streets; motor-buses
were half empty; implacable parcels-vans, with thin, exhausted boys
scarcely descried on their rear perches, forced the more fragile
traffic to yield place to them. Footfarers were few, except on the
north side of Coventry Street, where officers, soldiers, civilians,
police and courtesans marched eternally to and fro, peering at one
another in the thick gloom that, except in the immediate region of
a lamp, put all girls, the young and the ageing, the pretty and
the ugly, the good-natured and the grasping, on a sinister enticing
equality. And they were all, men and women and vehicles, phantoms
flitting and murmuring and hooting in the darkness. And the violet
glow-worms that hung in front of theatres and cinemas seemed to mark
the entrances to unimaginable fastnesses, and the side streets seemed
to lead to the precipitous edges of the universe where nothing was.

G.J. recognised Christine just beyond the knot of loiterers at the
Piccadilly Tube. The improbable had happened. She was walking at what
was for her a rather quick pace, purposeful and preoccupied. For an
instant the recognition was not mutual; he liked the uninviting stare
that she gave him as he stopped.

"It is thou?" she exclaimed, and her dimly-seen face softened suddenly
into a delighted, adoring smile.

He was moved by the passion which she still had for him. He felt
vaguely and yet acutely an undischarged obligation in regard to
her. It was the first time he had met her in such circumstances. A
constraint fell between them. In five minutes she would have been in
her Promenade engaged upon her highly technical business, displaying
her attractions while appearing to protect herself within a virginal
timidity (for this was her natural method). In any case, even had
he not set forth