So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and there took a train to Charing Cross.  Here he was only a little distance away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian Fellowes; and with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in front of the station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the jostle and the crush.  Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw Krool stealing along with a wide-awake hat well down over his eyes.  Presently the sinister figure was lost in the confusion.  It did not occur to him that perhaps Krool might be making for the same destination as himself; but the sight of the man threw his mind into an eddy of torturing thoughts.

The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also—­derelicts of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish and innocent woman whom they could entrap.  Among them moved also the thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending their way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even the good, looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable.  To-night, the crowd were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in their purposeless movements.  People sauntered, jerked themselves forward, moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and nowhere; and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering.  Newsboys with shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational rags.

Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook his head gravely at her.  After all, she had a hard trade and it led nowhere—­nowhere.

“Coming home with me, darling?” she added in response to his meditative look.  Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to her blunted sense.  “Coming home with me—?”

Home!  A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through Stafford’s brain.  Home—­where the business of this poor wayfarer’s existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the inner sanctuary!  Home....  He shook the girl’s hand from his elbow and hastened on.

Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself.  It was not moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word Home she used....  The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a corrosive acid.  He had had no home since his father died years ago,—­his mother had died when he was very young—­and his eldest brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother’s chair and in her place at table.