But on this evening in November she did not stop.  At the print-seller’s in Garrick Street, she hesitated, but one glance over her shoulder sped her onwards.  The apprehension most prominent in her mind was that if she continually looked behind her, the man might fancy she was encouraging him.  Once having consciously decided that, she turned no more until she had reached the protection of the fountain in the middle of the Circus.  There she stopped and glanced back.  He was gone.  In all the hundreds of human beings who mingled and churned like a swarm of ants upon an ant-hill, he was nowhere to be seen.  With a genuine sigh of relief, she crossed over to the Piccadilly side and walked beside a Hammersmith ’bus, as if slowed gradually down to the regulated place where the conditions of traffic permit vehicles to collect their passengers.

A little crowd of people, like flies upon fallen fruit, clung about the steps of the ’bus as it moved towards its resting-place.  She joined in with them, jostled along the pavement by their efforts to secure an advantageous position by the steps.  When finally it did come to a standstill and she had reached the conductor’s platform, the announcement, “Outside only,” met her attempt to force a passage within.

It was still raining—­persistent mist of rain that steals a way through any clothing.  Should she wait?  She had no umbrella.  But she had known what it was to wait on such occasions before.  The next ’bus would probably be full up inside, and the next, and the next.  Twenty minutes might well be wasted before she could start on her way home, and you have little energy left within you to care about a wetting, when from nine o’clock in the morning until six, when it is dark, you have been beating the keys of a typewriter.  Your mind demands but little then, so long as you can secure a peaceful oblivion.

So, in the face of others who turned back, she mounted the stairway on to the roof of the ’bus.  There she was alone, and, pulling the tarpaulin covering around her, she seated herself on the little bench farthest from the driver.  The little bell tinkled twice, viciously—­all drivers and conductors are made vicious by a steady rain—­and they moved out into the swim of the traffic, as a steamer puts out from its pier.

On bright evenings it was the most enjoyable part of the journey home, this ride from Piccadilly Circus to Hammersmith.  From there onwards in the tram to Kew Bridge, it became uninteresting.  The shops were not so bright; the people not so well dressed.  It always gave her a certain amount of quaint amusement to envy the ladies in their carriages and motor-cars.  The envy was not malicious.  You would have found no socialistic tendencies in her.  In her mind, utterly untutored in the sense of logic, she found birth to be a full and sufficient reason for possession.  But there was always alive in her consciousness the orderly desire to also be a possessor herself.