'Too bad, too bad,' said the stout man, looking back from the open door out of which he had already passed, 'you're the third girl who's said that to me in a fortnight.' 'Serve you right,' said Victoria, looking into the mirror opposite, 'you're as bad as Henry the . . . .' The door closed. Victoria did not finish her sentence. Her eyes were glued to the mirror. In it she could only see a young man with a thin face, decorated with many pimples, hurriedly gulping down the remains of his cup of coffee. But a second before then she had seen something which made her fetch a quick breath. The young man had looked round, marked that her head was turned away; he had thrown a quick glance to the right and the left, to the counter which Bella had left for a moment to go into the kitchen; then his hand had shot out and, with a quick movement, he had seized the stout man's pennies and slipped them under his own saucer. The young man got up. Victoria came up to him and made out his bill. He took it without a word and paid it at the desk, Victoria taking his money. 'Well, he didn't steal it, did he?' said Gertie, when Victoria told her of the incident. 'No, not exactly. Unless he stole it from the first man.' ''Ow could he steal it if he didn't take it?' snapped Gertie. 'Well, he made believe to tip me when he didn't, and he made believe that the first man was mean when it was he who was,' said Victoria. 'So he stole it from the first man to give it me.' 'Lord, I don't see what yer after,' said Gertie. 'You ain't lost nothing. And the first fellow he ain't lost nothing either. He'd _left_ his money.' Victoria struggled for a few sentences. The little Cockney brain could not take in her view. Gertie could only see that Victoria had had twopence from somebody instead of from somebody else, so what was her trouble? 'Tell yer wot,' said Gertie summing up the case, 'seems ter me the fellow knew wot he was after. Dodgy sort of thing to do. Oughter 'ave thought of the looking-glass though.' Victoria turned away from Gertie's crafty little smile. There was something in the girl that she could not understand; nor could Gertie understand her scruple. Gertie helped her a little though to solve the problem of waste; this girl could hardly be wasted, thought Victoria, for of what use could she be? She had neither the fine physique that enables a woman to bear big stupid sons, nor the intelligence which breeds a cleverer generation; she was sunk in the worship of easy pleasure, and ever bade the fleeting joy to tarry yet awhile. 'She isn't alive at all,' said Victoria to Lottie. 'She merely grows older.' 'Well, so do we,' replied Lottie in matter of fact tones.