sure whether the great hurtling thing would deign to stop, except at
trysting-places of its own; so it had seemed wise to bundle out rather
than risk a snub from the conductor, who looked like pictures of the Duke
of Wellington.

But in the lighted Strand she had been stared at as well as jostled:
a girl alone at eight o'clock on a winter evening, bare-headed,
conspicuously tall if conspicuous in no other way; dressed for dinner or
the theatre in a pale gray, sequined gown under a mauve chiffon cloak
meant for warm nights of summer.

Of course, as Mrs. Ellsworth (giver of dress and wrap) often pointed out,
"beggars mustn't be choosers"; and Annesley Grayle was worse off than a
beggar, because beggars needn't keep up appearances. She should have
thanked Heaven for good clothes, and so she did in chastened moods; but
it was a costume to make a girl hurry through the Strand, and just for an
instant she had been glad to turn from the white glare into comparative
dimness.

That was because offensive eyes had made her forget the almost immediate
future in the quite immediate present. But the hotel, with light-hearted
taxis tearing up to it, brought remembrance with a shock. She envied
everyone else who was bound for the Savoy, even old women, and fat
gentlemen with large noses. They were going there because they wanted to
go, for their pleasure. Nobody in the world could be in such an appalling
situation as she was.

It was then that Annesley's feet began to drag, and she slowed her steps
to gain more time to think. Could she--_could_ she do the thing?