She felt a hand tugging at something. It belonged to the old woman next to her.
“’Ere, you’re sitting on it!”
“I beg your pardon.”
She felt something flat withdrawn. It was a bloater wrapped up in a bit of paper, but the woman did not explain. She tucked the thing away behind her and relapsed. The whole seat resettled itself. No one said anything. Eve heard nothing but the sound of breathing, and the noise made by the passing of an occasional motor, cab, or train.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE SUFFRAGETTE
The night spent on the Embankment seat was less tragic than squalidly uncomfortable. Wedged in there between those hopeless other figures, Eve had to resist a nauseating sense of their physical uncleanness, and to overcome instincts that were in wholesome revolt. Her ears and nostrils did not spare her. There was a smell of stale alcohol, a smell of fish, a smell of sour and dirty clothes. Moreover, the man who sat on her right kept rolling his head on to her shoulder, his dirty felt hat rubbing her ear and cheek. She edged him off rather roughly, and he woke up and swore.
“What the —— are you shovin’ for?”
After that she did not attempt to wake him again, turning her face as far away as possible when his slobbery, stertorous mouth puffed against her shoulders.