Mrs. Flanders wrote letters; Mrs. Jarvis wrote them; Mrs. Durrant too; Mother Stuart actually scented her pages, thereby adding a flavour which the English language fails to provide; Jacob had written in his day long letters about art, morality, and politics to young men at college.  Clara Durrant’s letters were those of a child.  Florinda—­the impediment between Florinda and her pen was something impassable.  Fancy a butterfly, gnat, or other winged insect, attached to a twig which, clogged with mud, it rolls across a page.  Her spelling was abominable.  Her sentiments infantile.  And for some reason when she wrote she declared her belief in God.  Then there were crosses—­tear stains; and the hand itself rambling and redeemed only by the fact—­which always did redeem Florinda—­by the fact that she cared.  Yes, whether it was for chocolate creams, hot baths, the shape of her face in the looking-glass, Florinda could no more pretend a feeling than swallow whisky.  Incontinent was her rejection.  Great men are truthful, and these little prostitutes, staring in the fire, taking out a powder-puff, decorating lips at an inch of looking-glass, have (so Jacob thought) an inviolable fidelity.

Then he saw her turning up Greek Street upon another man’s arm.

The light from the arc lamp drenched him from head to toe.  He stood for a minute motionless beneath it.  Shadows chequered the street.  Other figures, single and together, poured out, wavered across, and obliterated Florinda and the man.

The light drenched Jacob from head to toe.  You could see the pattern on his trousers; the old thorns on his stick; his shoe laces; bare hands; and face.

It was as if a stone were ground to dust; as if white sparks flew from a livid whetstone, which was his spine; as if the switchback railway, having swooped to the depths, fell, fell, fell.  This was in his face.

Whether we know what was in his mind is another question.  Granted ten years’ seniority and a difference of sex, fear of him comes first; this is swallowed up by a desire to help—­overwhelming sense, reason, and the time of night; anger would follow close on that—­with Florinda, with destiny; and then up would bubble an irresponsible optimism.  “Surely there’s enough light in the street at this moment to drown all our cares in gold!” Ah, what’s the use of saying it?  Even while you speak and look over your shoulder towards Shaftesbury Avenue, destiny is chipping a dent in him.  He has turned to go.  As for following him back to his rooms, no—­that we won’t do.

Yet that, of course, is precisely what one does.  He let himself in and shut the door, though it was only striking ten on one of the city clocks.  No one can go to bed at ten.  Nobody was thinking of going to bed.  It was January and dismal, but Mrs. Wagg stood on her doorstep, as if expecting something to happen.  A barrel-organ played like an obscene nightingale beneath wet leaves.  Children ran across