“ That a beautiful young girl, created for pleasure and affection and expensive flattery, should be sitting by herself at 11 P.M. in a gloomy office in Clifford Street, in the centre of the luxurious, pleasure-mad, love-mad West End of London seemed shocking and contrary to nature, and Lilian certainly so regarded it. She pictured the shut shops, and shops and yet again shops, filled with elegance and costliness--robes, hats, stockings, shoes, gloves, incredibly fine lingerie, furs, jewels, perfumes--designed and confected for the setting-off of just such young attractiveness as hers. ”

“ Amid the obscurity of the room Lilian's curved form, lying heaped on its side, and rather like a miniature mountain that sloped softly down towards the head and towards the feet, could be vaguely deciphered in the bed; and hillocks of attire, some pale, others coloured, some fragile and diaphanous, others resistant to the world's peering, lay dimly about on chairs and even on the writing-table. The air, exhausted by the night, had a faint and delicate odour that excited, but did not offend, Felix's nostrils. ”

“ Every table in the blazing interior had round it a thick ring of sitters and standers, and many people were walking to and fro, disappointed or hopeful. By tiptoeing and supporting herself on Felix's shoulder Lilian could just see the green cloth of a table, like the floor of a pit whose walls were bodies elegant in evening dress; it was littered with white, rose, and green counters, banknotes, cards, ash-trays, cigarette cases, and vanity bags. More women were seated than men. A single croupier dominated and ruled the game. ”

“ Tea was laid on one of the desks, a dainty tea, such a tea as Lilian had never seen in the office, with more pastry than even two girls could eat who had had no lunch and expected no dinner; an extravagant display. Then a flapper entered with the tea-pot and the hot-water jug, and Lilian smiled at her, and the flapper blushed and smiled and tossed her winged pigtail. The flapper had a shabby air. Lilian could swallow only one cake because Gertrude was sitting where Felix had sat when he first told her what she might do and ought to do with herself. ”

“ Then Gertie Jackson came in. Absolutely unchanged! The same neat, provincial, Islingtonian toilette. The same serious, cheerful, ingenuous gaze. The same unmarred complexion. The same upright pose and throwing back of the shoulders in unconscious rectitude and calm intention to front courageously the difficulties of the day. The same mingling of self-respect and deference. She bent over the bed; Lilian held up her face like a child with mute invitation, and Gertie kissed her. What a fresh, honest, innocent, ignorant kiss on Lilian's hot, wasted, experienced cheek! ”

“ A pair of boots, or two pairs of boots--one large, one small and dainty--here and there on a door-mat seemed inexplicably to symbolize the forlornness of humanity in the sight of the infinite. The beating of Lilian's heart attracted her attention. Not without an effort could she cross the magic and formidable corridor. The door of the service-room was locked. No hope! Even Jacqueline had a bed somewhere and was asleep in it; and brandy was as unattainable as on a coral island. ”

“ The pride of her reception in Clifford Street wafted her easily up the somewhat austere stairs of the first floor establishment in Piccadilly. She had long been familiar with the face of the commissionaire, and the brass signs, of this mysterious shop, but never till the leading word attracted her eyes as she was driving from Montpelier Square to Clifford Street had it occurred to her what the word signified. The deceiving staircase led to splendid rooms, indicating that the renown of the establishment could not be spurious. ”

“ Not long since," said Miss Grig casually, carelessly, victoriously. "I must leave you now. I think I've had all my own things removed, and I hope nothing that belongs to you. If there's anything wrong, or anything I can do, will you write to Mr. Farjiac?"
She smiled gravely, steadily, and shook hands; and carried off her grief, her frustration, her ever-lasting tragedy, safe and intact and with pomp away from the poor, pretty little chit whom destiny had chosen to be the instrument of devastation. ”

“ The thud-thud of Lilian's heart appalled her. She blushed down to her neck. Her hand shook. The restaurant and all its inhabitants vanished in a cloud and then slowly reappeared. Her confusion of mind was terrible. She was shocked, outraged, by the negligently brutal candour of the avowal; and at the same time she was thinking: "I'd no idea that any man was as marvellous as this man is, and I don't think there can possibly be another man quite as marvellous anywhere. And his being in love with me is the most ravishing, lovely, tender--tender--tender thing that ever happened to any girl. ”

“ The table reserved was in a corner. Lilian had a full view of the whole restaurant, while Mr. Grig had a full view of nothing but Lilian. For a girl in Lilian's situation he was an ideal host, for the reason that he talked just as naturally--and in particular curtly--as if they had been at the office together. When a waiter shackled in silver approached with the wine list, he asked:
"What wine do you prefer?"
"Whatever you prefer," she replied, with a prompt and delicious smile.
"Oh, no!" he protested. "That won't do at all. If a woman's given the choice she ought to choose. ”

“ Lilian could only be; she would always remain at the mercy of someone, and the success which she desired could last probably no longer than her youth and beauty. The transience of the gifts upon which she must depend frightened her--but at the same time intensified anew her resolves. She had not a moment to lose. And Gertie, standing there close to her, sweet and reliable and good, in the dull cage, amid the daily circumstances of their common slavery, would have understood nothing of Lilian's obscure emotion. ”

“ Nearly opposite the end of Clifford Street, in Bond Street, was a hosier's shop with the royal arms over the entrance and half a dozen pairs of rich blue-and-crimson pyjamas--and nothing else--displayed in the window against a chaste background of panelled acacia wood. Lilian saw a phantasm of her client's lordly chamber, with the bed and the telephone by the bed, and the great form of the man himself recumbent and moveless, gloriously and imperfectly covered in a suit of the blue-and-crimson pyjamas. ”

“ Lilian was left in such a state of exaltation that she could not immediately start to work. She was ecstatically inspired with a resolution, far transcending all previous yearnings of a similar nature, to fulfil herself, to be herself utterly, to bring her gifts to fruition despite all obstacles and all impossibilities. It was not that she desired to please Lord Mackworth (though she passionately desired to please him) , nor to achieve luxury and costliness and elegance and a highly refined way of life. ”

“ There she stood, the marvellous, the semi-legendary Lilian, who had captured the aristocratic master, run off with him to the Continent, married him, buried him, inherited all his possessions, and was soon going to have a baby. Her famous beauty was under eclipse, her famous figure had grown monstrous beyond any possible concealment; but she was still marvellous. She was the most romantic figure that those girls had ever seen; she was all picture-paper serials and cinema films rolled together and come to life and reality. Her prestige was terrific. ”

“ The diners had abandoned themselves to intimacy or the sweet coma of digestion. Some talked rather loudly, others in a murmur. Women leaned back, or put their elbows on the table, letting cigarette smoke float upwards across their eyes. A few tables were already deserted, and the purity of their emptiness seemed bafflingly to demonstrate that events may happen and leave behind absolutely no trace. Without consulting Lilian Mr. Grig gave an order and two small glasses were slowly filled to the brim with a green liquid. Lilian recognized it for the very symbol of delicate licence. ”

“ She stood in front of Lilian, who rose. She was as flat as Milly Merrislate, and neither tall nor graceful. Every lineament of the pert face so heavily masked in paint and powder, every gesture, the too bright stockings, the gilded shoes, the impudent coiffure, the huge and flashy rings, the square-dialled wrist-watch--all were crudely symptomatic of an ingrained and unalterable vulgarity. Lilian was absolutely unable to understand how any man, however coarse and cynical, could find any charm of any kind in such a girl. ”

“ He saw the town of Brighton as a living, developing whole, discussing it as a single organism, showing how its evolution was still in active process, and making the small group of men who were exploiting it and directing it appear like creative giants and the mass of inhabitants like midgets utterly unconscious of their own manipulation. And in his account of the vast affair there was no right and no wrong; there were merely the dark aims and the resolution of the giants determined to wax in power and to imprint themselves on the municipality. Lilian had never heard such revealing talk ”

“ Lilian passed on under their combined stare. She glimpsed herself in mirrors, as once she used to glimpse herself in the shop windows of Bond Street, and was satisfied with the vision. Her walk was as remarkable as her beauty. Yes, she knew how to put her feet on the ground and how to make her body float smoothly and evenly above the moving limbs. Her spirit rose as she began to suspect that no woman in the rooms was getting more notice than herself. Fancy Felix being absorbed in his gambling! She had forgotten Lord Mackworth ”

“ Gertie mentioned the dreadful name of one of those hidden though not shameful maladies which afflict only women--but the majority of women. The crude words sounded oddly on Gertie's prim lips. Lilian was duly impressed; she was as if intimidated. At intervals the rumour of a victim of that class of diseases runs whisperingly through assemblages of women, who on the entrance of a male hastily change the subject of talk and become falsely bright. ”

“ She vaguely and with inimical deference comprehended the secret of Miss Grig's success in business. Youth and beauty and charm, qualities so well appreciated by Felix, so rich in promise for Lilian, were absolutely powerless against the armour of Miss Grig. To Miss Grig Lilian was no better than a cross-eyed, flat-bosomed spinster of thirty-nine. Not a bit better! Perhaps worse! Miss Grig actually had the assurance to preach to Lilian the nauseous and unnatural doctrine that men are by right entitled to the protection and self-sacrifice of women. ”

“ She had no coquetry, and not the slightest inclination for chic. Her clothes were "good," and bought in Upper Street, Islington; her excellent boots gave her away. She was not uninterested in men; but she did not talk about them, she twittered about them. To Lilian she had the soul of an infant. And she was too pure, too ingenuous, too kind, too conscientious; her nature lacked something fundamental, and Lilian felt but could not describe what it was--save by saying that she had no kick in either her body or her soul. ”

“ And she behaved like an angel through the whole industrious night--so much so that Lilian was nearly ready to admit to an uncharitable premature misjudgment of the girl.
"And now what are you going to do about keeping open?" inquired Mr. Grig, with bland, grim triumph the next afternoon to the exhausted Lilian and the exhausted Millicent. "I thought I'd let you have your own way last night. But you can't see any further than your noses, either of you. You're both dead."
"I can easily stay up another night," said Lilian desperately, but Millicent said nothing. ”