“We needn’t go as fur as the Cross’n Beetle, if we don’t like,” said Mrs. Love.  “They’ll never notice if we ’ook it.”

“I don’t want to ’ook it,” said Jay.  “I want to keep very busy listening to noisy people.  I don’t want to hear myself think.”

“You’re mopey, eh?” asked Mrs. Love gently.

“I’m cold,” said Jay.  “I believe I’ve lost something.  I believe I’ve lost a friend of mine.”

“Friends is always gettin’ lost,” said Mrs. Love.  “I told you so.  Let’s go an’ ’ave a look at the pictures.  They’ve got the ‘Curse of a Crook’ on up the street.  Fairly mike yer ’air curl.”

“I want noise,” said Jay, “a much louder noise than that old piano.  The pictures are so horribly quiet.  Just an underfed man turning a handle, and an underfed woman hitting an underfed piano.  At a play you can at least pretend that the actors are having a little fun too, but the pictures—­there’s only two sad people without smiles at the bottom of it all.  I won’t go to the pictures, I’ll go and get drunk.”

“Come on then,” said Mrs. Love.  “You won’t find no lost friends there, but come on.  I’ll be yer pal for to-night.  You’ve been a pal to me before now.  We’re temp’ary pals right enough, there’ ain’t no permanent kind.  You won’t find no shivers straying around in the ole Cross’n Beetle.  Let’s ‘urry, an’ get drunk, and keep ’and in ’and all the time.  That’s wot pals oughter do.”

Jay suddenly saw the whole world as a thing running away from its thoughts.  The crowd that filled the pavement was fugitive, and every man felt the hot breath of fear on the back of his neck.  One only used one’s voice for the drowning of one’s thoughts; one only used one’s feet for running away.  The whole world was in flight along the endless streets, and the lucky ones were in trams and donkey carts that they might flee the faster.

“Hurry, hurry,” said Jay.  And she and little Mrs. Love ran hand in hand.

The Chap from the Top Floor and Mrs.  ’Ero Edwards were already leading society in the Cross’n Beetle when Jay and Mrs. Love reached it.  The barman knew Mrs. Edwards too well to think that she was drunk already, but you or I, transported suddenly thither, would have supposed that her beano was over instead of yet to come.

“’Elbert,” said Mrs.  ’Ero Edwards, “yo’re an ’Un, yo’re an internal alien, thet’s what’s the metter with you.  I wonder I ’aven’t blacked yer eye for you many a time and oft.”

There was almost enough noise even for Jay, and she and Mrs. Love, each armed with a generously topped glass, sat in the background, on the shiny seat that lined the wall.

To Jay this evening was an experiment, an experiment born of weariness of a well-worn road.  She watched Mrs. Love blow some of the superfluous froth on to the floor, and did likewise.  Directly she had put her lips to the thick brim of her glass she knew that here was the stuff of which certain dreams are made.