Women were everywhere on the pavements. They lifted their silk skirts out of the mud, revealing ankles and lace petticoats. They smiled on him. They lured him in foreign tongues and in broken English. He broadly winked at some of the more youthful ones, and they followed him importunately, only to be shaken off with a laugh. As he walked, he whistled or sang all the time. He was cut adrift, he explained to himself, and through no fault of his own. His sole friend had left him (much she cared!), and there was none to whom he owed the slightest consideration. He was at liberty to do what he liked, without having to consider first, "What would _she_ think of this?" Moreover, he must discover solace, poor blighted creature! Looking down a side street, he saw a man talking to a woman. He went past them, and heard what they said. Then he was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Curious sensations fluttered through his frame. With an insignificant oath, he nerved himself to a resolve. Several times he was on the very point of carrying it out when his courage failed. He traversed the Circus, got as far as St. James's Hall, and returned upon his steps. In a minute he was on the north side of Coventry Street. He looked into the faces of all the women, but in each he found something to repel, to fear. Would it end in his going quietly home? He crossed over into the seclusion of Whitcomb Street to argue the matter. As he was passing the entry to a court, a woman came out, and both had to draw back to avoid a collision. "_Chéri_!" she murmured. She was no longer young, but her broad, Flemish face showed kindliness and good humour in every feature of it, and her voice was soft. He did not answer, and she spoke to him again. His spine assumed the consistency of butter; a shuddering thrill ran through him. She put her arm gently into his, and pressed it. He had no resistance.... CHAPTER XXVI It was the morning of Boxing Day, frosty, with a sky of steel grey; the streets were resonant under the traffic. Richard had long been anticipating the advent of the New Year, when new resolutions were to come into force. A phrase from a sermon heard at Bursley stuck in his memory: _Every day begins a new year_. But he could not summon the swift, courageous decision necessary to act upon that adage. For a whole year he had been slowly subsiding into a bog of lethargy, and to extricate himself would, he felt, need an amount of exertion which he could not put forth unless fortified by all the associations of the season for such feats, and by the knowledge that fellow-creatures were bracing themselves for a similar difficult wrench.