Thyme nodded.  Again there was silence; but in these pauses there was no embarrassment, no consciousness apparently that it was silence, and their eyes—­those young, impatient, interested eyes—­were for ever busy observing.

“Boundary line.  We shall be in a patch directly.”

“Black?” asked Thyme.

“Dark blue—­black farther on.”

They were passing down a long, grey, curving road, whose narrow houses, hopelessly unpainted, showed marks of grinding poverty.  The Spring wind was ruffling straw and little bits of paper in the gutters; under the bright sunlight a bleak and bitter struggle seemed raging.  Thyme said: 

“This street gives me a hollow feeling.”

Martin nodded.  “Worse than the real article.  There’s half a mile of this.  Here it’s all grim fighting.  Farther on they’ve given it up.”

And still they went on up the curving street, with its few pinched shops and its unending narrow grimness.

At the corner of a by-street Martin said:  “We’ll go down here.”

Thyme stood still, wrinkling her nose.  Martin eyed her.

“Don’t funk!”

“I’m not funking, Martin, only I can’t stand the smells.”

“You’ll have to get used to them.”

“Yes, I know; but—­but I forgot my eucalyptus.”

The young man took out a handkerchief which had not yet been unfolded.

“Here, take mine.”

“They do make me feel so—­it’s a shame to take yours,” and she took the handkerchief.

“That’s all right,” said Martin.  “Come on!”

The houses of this narrow street, inside and out, seemed full of women.  Many of them had babies in their arms; they were working or looking out of windows or gossiping on doorsteps.  And all stopped to stare as the young couple passed.  Thyme stole a look at her companion.  His long stride had not varied; there was the usual pale, observant, sarcastic expression on his face.  Clenching the handkerchief in readiness, and trying to imitate his callous air, she looked at a group of five women on the nearest doorstep.

Three were seated and two were standing.  One of these, a young woman with a round, open face, was clearly very soon to have a child; the other, with a short, dark face and iron-grey, straggling hair, was smoking a clay pipe.  Of the three seated, one, quite young, had a face as grey white as a dirty sheet, and a blackened eye; the second, with her ragged dress disarranged, was nursing a baby; the third, in the centre, on the top step, with red arms akimbo, her face scored with drink, was shouting friendly obscenities to a neighbour in the window opposite.  In Thyme’s heart rose the passionate feeling, ’How disgusting! how disgusting!’ and since she did not dare to give expression to it, she bit her lips and turned her head from them, resenting, with all a young girl’s horror, that her sex had given her away.  The women stared at her,