was by no means vulgarly pretty.  To more personal charm than mere youth could account for, she added the seductive appearance of enthusiasm, of independence, of courageous thought.  I suppose she put on these appearances as she put on her picturesque dresses and for the same reason:  to assert her individuality at any cost.  You know, women would go to any length almost for such a purpose.  She went to a great length.  She had acquired all the appropriate gestures of revolutionary convictions—­the gestures of pity, of anger, of indignation against the anti-humanitarian vices of the social class to which she belonged herself.  All this sat on her striking personality as well as her slightly original costumes.  Very slightly original; just enough to mark a protest against the philistinism of the overfed taskmasters of the poor.  Just enough, and no more.  It would not have done to go too far in that direction—­you understand.  But she was of age, and nothing stood in the way of her offering her house to the revolutionary workers.”

“You don’t mean it!” I cried.

“I assure you,” he affirmed, “that she made that very practical gesture.  How else could they have got hold of it?  The cause is not rich.  And, moreover, there would have been difficulties with any ordinary house-agent, who would have wanted references and so on.  The group she came in contact with while exploring the poor quarters of the town (you know the gesture of charity and personal service which was so fashionable some years ago) accepted with gratitude.  The first advantage was that Hermione Street is, as you know, well away from the suspect part of the town, specially watched by the police.

“The ground floor consisted of a little Italian restaurant, of the flyblown sort.  There was no difficulty in buying the proprietor out.  A woman and a man belonging to the group took it on.  The man had been a cook.  The comrades could get their meals there, unnoticed amongst the other customers.  This was another advantage.  The first floor was occupied by a shabby Variety Artists’ Agency—­an agency for performers in inferior music-halls, you know.  A fellow called Bomm, I remember.  He was not disturbed.  It was rather favourable than otherwise to have a lot of foreign-looking people, jugglers, acrobats, singers of both sexes, and so on, going in and out all day long.  The police paid no attention to new faces, you see.  The top floor happened, most conveniently, to stand empty then.”

X interrupted himself to attack impassively, with measured movements, a bombe glacee which the waiter had just set down on the table.  He swallowed carefully a few spoonfuls of the iced sweet, and asked me, “Did you ever hear of Stone’s Dried Soup?”

“Hear of what?”