What dreadful things women are, thought Victoria, folding up the _Telegraph_. If Christ had said: Let _her_ who hath never sinned. . . the woman would have been stoned. Victoria got up, went to the looking-glass and inspected herself. Yes, she was very pretty. She was prettier than she had ever been before. Her skin was paler, her eyes larger; her thick eyebrows almost met in an exquisite gradation of short dark hairs over the bridge of the nose. She watched her breast rise and fall gently, flashing white through the black lacework of her blouse, then falling away from it, tantalising the faint sunshine that would kiss it. As she turned, another looking-glass set in the lower panels of a small cupboard told her that her feet were small and high arched. Her openwork stockings were drawn so tight that the skin there also gleamed white. Victoria took from the table a dirty visiting card. It bore the words 'Louis Carrel, Musical and Theatrical Agent, 5 Soho Place.' She had come by it in singular manner. Two days before, as she left the offices of the 'Compleat Governess Agency' after having realised that she could not qualify in either French, German, Music, Poker work or Swedish drill, she had paused for a moment on the doorstep, surveying the dingy court where they were concealed, the dirty panes of an unlet shop opposite, the strange literature flaunting in the showcase of some publisher of esoterics. A woman had come up to her, rising like the loafers from the flagstones. She had realised her as between ages and between colours. Then the woman had disappeared as suddenly as she came without having spoken, leaving in Victoria's hand the little square of pasteboard. Victoria looked at it meditatively. She would have shrunk from the idea of the stage a year before, when the tradition of Lympton was still upon her. But times had changed; a simple philosophy was growing in her; what did anything matter? would it not be all the same in a hundred years? The discovery of this philosophy did not strike her as commonplace. There are but few who know that this is the philosophy of the world. Victoria put down the card and began to dress. She removed the old black skirt and ragged lace blouse and, as she stood before the glass in her short petticoat, patting her hair and setting a comb, she reflected with satisfaction that her arms were shapely and white. She looked almost lovingly at the long thin dark hairs, fine as silk, that streaked her forearms; she kissed them gently, moved to self-adoration by the sweet scent of femininity that rose from her.