"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that . . . that man. And now you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with me and see."
It was not until afterwards that I knew by what mistake about my presence in that place Angela thought she must justify herself in my eyes (mine!); but taking me by the hand, just as she used to do when I was a child, she led, almost pulled, me down Piccadilly, and my will was so broken that I did not attempt to resist her.
We crossed Piccadilly Circus, with its white sheet of electric light, and, turning into the darker thoroughfares on the northern side of it, walked on until, in a narrow street of the Italian quarter of Soho, we stopped at a private door by the side of a café that had an Italian name on the window.
"This is where we live. Come in," said Angela, and I followed her through a long empty lobby and up three flights of bare stairs.
While we ascended, there was the deadened sound, as from the café, of men singing (in throbbing voices to mandolines and guitars) one of the Italian songs which I remembered to have heard from the piazza outside the convent on that night when Sister Angela left me in bed while she went off to visit the chaplain:
"Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato
Onde sorridere volle il creato."
"The Italian Club," said Angela. "Only one flight more. Come!"
ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST CHAPTER
At length Angela opened, with a key from her satchel, a door on the top landing, and we entered a darkened room which was partly in the roof.