remained where he was, among his own people, and in his own sphere, he deserted the child; if he went back to her, he deserted them, and took up his life in surroundings uncongenial, except so far as she was concerned. And he saw that it was utterly impossible to go half-way about one matter or the other; Arcadia Street was not to be brought into the West End and dumped down there.

It happened that between the acts he went out to smoke a cigarette, and found himself, with a dozen other men, near the open doors of the theatre. A few people were strolling listlessly outside in the street—pausing now and then to stare in at the well-dressed men, and to whisper. And once a girl went past—a thin shabby girl in black; and he was reminded so forcibly of Bessie Meggison that, without knowing what he did, he hurried out of the place, and went after her. Fifty yards down the street she stopped to look in at a shop window; and it was not Bessie at all, but someone quite different. Yet the[65] thought assailed him, as he went back to the theatre, that just in that fashion the girl might be wandering alone in this horrible London—poorly clad, and not too well fed. He hated the thought of his own prosperity; quite unnecessarily called himself a brute, because he had had a good dinner, and was supposed to be out in search of enjoyment.

[65]

Never for a moment, of course, did it occur to him that his point of view was wrong; never for a moment did he understand that properly his life could not touch the girl's, and could have nothing in common with it. He accused himself unnecessarily, when the only mistake that had been made in the whole matter was in going to Arcadia Street at all, and above all going there under false colours. That point of view he did not regard in the least.

But he walked home that night, after leaving his friends, feeling miserably that it would have been better if he had buried himself for ever in Arcadia Street; if in some impossible way, he could have forgotten this selfish purposeless life he had always lived, and could have flung himself into some real work that would have brought him nearer in thought and feeling to the girl. Not for the first time he cried out against artificiality; metaphorically speaking, he wanted to put on rough clothing and thick boots, and plunge into the real fierce work of the world.

Some sense of the injustice of the world in meting out such different lots to such different women urged him, after a lapse of days during which he had been at the beck and call of Enid, to go back to Arcadia Street. He told himself 

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