principals. Also, most of the chaffering was negotiated over drink,
to obtain which adjournment was made to the handiest bar.

This exchange was as subject to economic laws as ruthlessly as are
all other markets. There were fat times, when money was plentiful;
lean nights, when buyers were scarce or sellers suffered from over-
supply. To complete the resemblance, this mart was sensibly affected
by world events, political happenings, the robustness or weakness of
other markets of industry.

Men of all ages swarmed on the pavement; some were buyers, others
were attracted by the fun of the fair. The family parties which were
occasionally to be met with, as they scurried home to remote
suburbs, seemed sadly out of place in this seething collection of
vicious men and women.

An over-dressed black woman was there, as if to prove, if proof were
needed, the universality of sin.

As the procession of painted faces loomed out of the fog, it seemed
to Mavis as if they were lost souls in the spume of the pit.

She drew closer to the man at her side. London, life itself, seemed
to the girl's jangled nerves to be a concentrated horror, from
which, so it now appeared, the man beside her was her only
safeguard. He had certainly insulted her, she reflected; but his
conduct was, perhaps, excusable under the circumstances in which he
had found her. Directly he had learned his mistake, he had rescued
her from further contact with infamy, and had been gentle with her.
In return, she had been scarcely civil to him, and had told him a