Over the counter she related her successes as Clairette in _Madame Angot_ and Serpolette in _Les Cloches de Corneville_, and if an incredulous look came into the faces of her guests she sang to them the little ditties, proving by her knowledge of them that all she told them was true. From the drinking-shop they passed out in groups, and these women took Kate to their eating-houses, and she listened to their stories, and when at the end of the week she had spent all her money sometimes these women lent her shillings and half-crowns, and when she could not return the money she had borrowed they asked her: 'Why don't you do as we do?' Her pretty face of former days was almost gone by this time, but traces of it still remained. 'If you would only dress yourself a little more becomingly and come along with us, you would be able to make two ends meet. With what you get from your husband you would be better off than any of us.' But she could not be persuaded, and as time moved on, and drunkenness became more inveterate, the belief that she was not utterly lost unless she was unfaithful to Dick took possession of her, and she clung to it with an almost desperate insistency, saying to her friends, 'If I were to do that I should go down to the river and drown myself.' She used to hear laughter when she said these words, and the replies were that every woman had said the same thing: 'But we all come to it sooner or later.' 'Not me, not me!' she replied, tottering out of the public-house. But one night, awakening in the dusk between daylight and dark, she remembered that something had befallen her that had never befallen her before. She was not sure, it may have been that she had dreamed it. All the same, she could not rid herself of the idea that last night in the public-house near Charing Cross a man had come in and said he would pay for the drinks, and that afterwards she had gone to one of the hotels in Villiers Street. If she hadn't why did she think of Villiers Street? She rarely went down that street. Yet she was haunted by a memory, a hateful memory that had kept her awake, and had caused her to moan and to cry for hours, till at last sleep fell upon her. On waking her first thought was to inquire from the women, and she walked up and down the Strand seeking them till nightfall. But they could tell her nothing of what had happened after she left them, 'Dry your eyes, Kate,' they said. 'What matter? Your husband deserted you; aren't you free to live with whom you please?'