"Madame," and then they parted, insinuating themselves separately into
the slow, confused traffic of the Promenade.




Chapter 2

THE POWER


Christine knew Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Regent Street, a bit of
Oxford Street, the Green Park, Hyde Park, Victoria Station, Charing
Cross. Beyond these, London, measureless as the future and the past,
surrounded her with the unknown. But she had not been afraid, because
of her conviction that men were much the same everywhere, and that she
had power over them. She did not exercise this power consciously; she
had merely to exist and it exercised itself. For her this power was
the mystical central fact of the universe. Now, however, as she stood
in the Promenade, it seemed to her that something uncanny had happened
to the universe. Surely it had shifted from its pivot! Her basic
conviction trembled. Men were not the same everywhere, and her power
over them was a delusion. Englishmen were incomprehensible; they were
not human; they were apart. The memory of the hundreds of Englishmen
who had yielded to her power in Paris (for she had specialised in
travelling Englishmen) could not re-establish her conviction as to
the sameness of men. The presence of her professed rivals of various
nationalities in the Promenade could not restore it either. The
Promenade in its cold, prim languor was the very negation of
desire. She was afraid. She foresaw ruin for herself in this London,