At a corner, near a public house blazing with lights, a small crowd watched two women who were about to fight. They had not come to blows yet; their duel was purely Homeric. Victoria listened with greedy horror to the terrible recurrence of half a dozen words.
A child squirmed through the crowd, crying, and caught one of the fighters by her skirt.
'Leave go . . . I'll rive the guts out 'o yer.'
With a swing of the body the woman sent the child flying into the gutter. Victoria hurried from the spot. She made towards the West now, between the gin shops, the barrows under their blazing naphtha lamps. She was afraid, horribly afraid.
Sitting alone in her attic, her hands crossed before her, questions intruded upon her. Why all this pain, this violence, by the side of life's graces? Could it be that one went with the other, indissolubly? And could it be altered before it was too late, before the earth was flooded, overwhelmed with pain?
She slipped into bed and drew the horsecloth over her ears. The world was best shut out.
CHAPTER XXII
Thomas Farwell collected three volumes from his desk, two pamphlets and a banana. It was six o'clock and, the partners having left, he was his own master half an hour earlier than usual.
'You off?' said the junior from the other end of the desk.