Three or four times, as they went along, Adam would eye a shop window and turn in at the door, while Eve waited.  He returned from different excursions with a twopenny loaf, a red sausage, a pipe, box of lights and screw of tobacco, and a noggin or so of gin in an old soda-water bottle.  Once they turned aside into a public, and had a drink of gin together.  Adam paid.

Thus for two hours they plodded westward, and the fog and crowd were with them all the way—­strangers jostling them by the shoulder on the greasy pavement, hansoms splashing the brown mud over them—­the same din for miles.  Many shops were lighting up, and from these a yellow flare streamed into the fog; or a white when it came from the electric light; or separate beams of orange, green, and violet, when the shop was a druggist’s.

Then they came to the railings of Hyde Park, and trudged down the hill alongside them to Kensington Gardens.  It was yet early in the afternoon.  Adam pulled up.

“Come and look,” he said.  “It’s autumn in there,” and he went in at the Victoria gate, with Eve at his heels.

“Mister, how old might you be?” she asked, encouraged by the sound of his voice.

“Thirty.”

“And you’ve passed ten years in—­in there.”  She jerked her head back and shivered a little.

He had stooped to pick up a leaf.  It was a yellow leaf from a chestnut that reached into the fog above them.  He picked it slowly to pieces, drawing full draughts of air into his lungs.  “Fifteen,” he jerked out, “one time and another.  ’Cumulated, you know.”  Pausing, he added, in a matter-of-fact voice, “What I’ve took would come to less’n a pound’s worth, altogether.”

The Gardens were deserted, and the pair roamed towards the centre, gazing curiously at so much of sodden vegetation as the fog allowed them to see.  Their eyes were not jaded; to them a blade of grass was not a little thing.

They were down on the south side, amid the heterogeneous plants there collected, examining each leaf, spelling the Latin labels and comparing them, when the hour came for closing.  In the dense atmosphere the park-keeper missed them.  The gates were shut; and the fog settled down thicker with the darkness.

Then the man and the woman were aware, and grew afraid.  They saw only a limitless plain of grey about them, and heard a murmur as of the sea rolling around it.

“This gaol is too big,” whispered Eve, and they took hands.  The man trembled.  Together they moved into the fog, seeking an outlet.

At the end of an hour or so they stumbled on a seat, and sat down for awhile to share the bread and sausage, and drink the gin.  Eve was tired out and would have slept, but the man shook her by the shoulder.

“For God’s sake don’t leave me to face this alone.  Can you sing?”

She began “When other lips . . .” in a whisper which gradually developed into a reedy soprano.  She had forgotten half the words, but Adam lit a pipe and listened appreciatively.