had made that easy for her to appreciate.  This moment to her was as the gap in the wall of riders before him is to the jockey; in that moment she saw clear down the straight to the winning-post.  She took it.  Ten minutes before she had not known where to turn.  The race had seemed impossible.  Two or three times she had opened her reticule bag and counted the four coppers that jingled within the pocket.  She had had no dinner.  No music hall was possible to her with such capital.  You know something of life when you have only fourpence in the world and vice is the only trade for which your hand has acquired any deftness.

“I pray God no man ’ll offer me ten bob to-night,” she had said to another woman.

“Why?”

“Why?  Gosh!  I’d take it.”

Here then, out of nowhere, in the dull impenetrable wall was torn the gap through which she saw the chance, such a chance as she had never been offered by the generosity of circumstance before.  She seized it—­no hesitation—­no lack of inspiring confidence.  It did not even cross her mind that she looked tired.  She was in no way thwarted by the knowledge that she was not so young, not so pretty as when first she had known him.  The opportunity was too great for that.  It had fallen so obviously at her feet, that she felt it was meant for her.

She shuffled her feet on the cold clean matting and said again, “I’d have a nice thick carpet—­”

“What colour?”

She looked up to the ceiling to think—­not at the room around her.

“I don’t know—­Turkey red, I think—­that’s warmest.  You know my carpet—­well, it used to be nice.  It’s worn a bit now and there’s not so much colour in it as when it was new.  That was Turkey red.”

“And what else?” He sat on the corner of an old table and smoked his pipe—­swinging his legs and looking at her.

“Well, I’d have electric lights instead of these candles—­you can’t expect a woman to see with candles;—­’lectric light’s twice as cheap and it’s much brighter.  And they make lovely new fittings now—­quite inexpensive—­oxidized copper, I think they call it; I like brass best myself.”

“You think brass is better?”

“Yes; don’t you?  Those brass candlesticks that you’ve got are all right, only they’re so plain.”

“You like things more ornate?”

“More what?”

“More ornate—­more highly finished—­more elaborate?”

“Yes; don’t you?”

He took no notice of that question.  “What else would you do?” he asked.  The smoke curled up in clouds from the bowl of his pipe as he sat listening to her.

She looked round the room contemplatively.

“Oh—­lots of things,” she said.  “I’d have a sofa—­one of those settee sort of things—­”

“Upholstered in red?”

“Yes—­to go with the carpet.  And a comfortable armchair—­really comfortable, I mean—­something that you could chuck your legs about it—­less like a straight jacket than this thing I’m sitting in.”