Under the lamps you were jostled by people like my Staffordshire
uncle out for a spree, you saw shy youths conversing with
prostitutes, you passed young lovers pairing with an entire
disregard of the social suitability of the "types" they might blend
or create, you saw men leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you
knew for the "type" that will charge with fixed bayonets into the
face of death, and you found yourself unable to imagine little
Bailey achieving either drunkenness or the careless defiance of
annihilation. You realised that quite a lot of types were
underrepresented in Chambers Street, that feral and obscure and
altogether monstrous forces must be at work, as yet altogether
unassimilated by those neat administrative reorganisations.



5


Altiora, I remember, preluded Margaret's reappearance by announcing
her as a "new type."

I was accustomed to go early to the Baileys' dinners in those days,
for a preliminary gossip with Altiora in front of her drawing-room
fire. One got her alone, and that early arrival was a little sign
of appreciation she valued. She had every woman's need of followers
and servants.

"I'm going to send you down to-night," she said, "with a very
interesting type indeed--one of the new generation of serious gals.
Middle-class origin--and quite well off. Rich in fact. Her step-