Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive to Green’s Hotel, and it was only after she had arrived, arranged her things, washed, and had lunch, that the beginnings of confusion and home-sickness stirred within her.  Up to then a simmering excitement had kept her from thinking of how she was to act, or of what she had hoped, expected, dreamed, would come of her proceedings.  Taking her sunshade, she walked out into Bond Street.

A passing man took off his hat.

‘Dear me,’ she thought, ‘who was that?  I ought to know!’

She had a rather vague memory for faces, and though she could not recall his name, felt more at home at once, not so lonely and adrift.  Soon a quaint brightness showed in her eyes, looking at the toilettes of the passers-by, and at each shop-front, more engrossing than the last.  Pleasure, like that which touches the soul of a young girl at her first dance, the souls of men landing on strange shores, touched Margery Pendyce.  A delicious sense of entering the unknown, of braving the unexpected, and of the power to go on doing this delightfully for ever, enveloped her with the gay London air of this bright June day.  She passed a perfume shop, and thought she had never smelt anything so nice.  And next door she lingered long looking at some lace; and though she said to herself, “I must not buy anything; I shall want all my money for poor George,” it made no difference to that sensation of having all things to her hand.

A list of theatres, concerts, operas confronted her in the next window, together with the effigies of prominent artistes.  She looked at them with an eagerness that might have seemed absurd to anyone who saw her standing there.  Was there, indeed, all this going on all day and every day, to be seen and heard for so few shillings?  Every year, religiously, she had visited the opera once, the theatre twice, and no concerts; her husband did not care for music that was “classical.”  While she was standing there a woman begged of her, looking very tired and hot, with a baby in her arms so shrivelled and so small that it could hardly be seen.  Mrs. Pendyce took out her purse and gave her half a crown, and as she did so felt a gush of feeling which was almost rage.

‘Poor little baby!’ she thought.  ’There must be thousands like that, and I know nothing of them!’

She smiled to the woman, who smiled back at her; and a fat Jewish youth in a shop doorway, seeing them smile, smiled too, as though he found them charming.  Mrs. Pendyce had a feeling that the town was saying pretty things to her, and this was so strange and pleasant that she could hardly believe it, for Worsted Skeynes had omitted to say that sort of thing to her for over thirty years.  She looked in the window of a hat shop, and found pleasure in the sight of herself.  The window was kind to her grey linen, with black velvet knots and guipure, though it was two years old; but, then, she had only been able to