“Indeed!” said Mavis, scarcely knowing what to say.

“All the same, I prays for them, though what God A’mighty thinks o’ me for all the sinners I pray for, I can’t think.  Supper’s downstairs, if you can eat it; and my name’s Bella.”

Bella left the room.  Mavis thought that she rather liked her than otherwise, despite her rudeness earlier in the evening.  Mavis unpacked her more immediate requirements before seeking supper in the basement.  She descended to the floor on which was the passage communicating with the street, but the staircase leading to the supper-room was unlit, therefore she was compelled to grope her way down; as she did so, she became aware of a disgusting smell which reminded Mavis of a time at Brandenburg College when the drains went wrong and had to be put right.  She then found herself in a carpetless passage lit by gas flaming in a wire cage; here, the smell of drains was even more offensive than before.  There was a half-open door on the right, from which came the clatter of knives and plates.  Mavis, believing that this was the supper-room, went in.

She found herself in a large, low room, the walls of which were built with glazed brick.  Upon the left, the further wall receded as it approached the ceiling, to admit, in daytime, the light that straggled from the thick glass let into the pavement, on which the footsteps of the passers-by were ceaselessly heard.  The room was filled by a long table covered by a scanty cloth, at which several pasty-faced, unwholesome-looking young women were eating bread and cheese, the while they talked in whispers or read from journals, books, or novelettes.  At the head of the table sat a dark, elderly little woman, who seemed to be all nose and fuzzy hair:  this person was not eating.  Several of the girls looked with weary curiosity at Mavis, while they mentally totted up the price she had paid for her clothes; when they reached their respective totals, they resumed their meal.

“Miss Keeth?” said the dark little woman at the head of the table, who spoke with a lisp.

“Yes,” replied Mavis.

“If you want thupper, you’ll find a theat.”

“Thank you.”

Mavis sank wearily in the first empty chair.  “Dawes’” had already got on her nerves.  She was sick at heart with all she had gone through; from the depths of her being she resented being considered on an equality with the two young women she had met and those she saw about her.  She closed her eyes as she tried to take herself, for a brief moment, from her surroundings.  She was recalled to the present by a plate, on which was a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese, being thrust beneath her nose.  She was hungry when she came downstairs; now, appetite had left her.  Her gorge rose at the pasty-faced girls, the brick-walled cellar, the unwholesome air, and the beady-eyed little woman seated at the head of the table.  She thought it better, if only for her health’s sake, to