She hailed the first omnibus that came rocking down Piccadilly. She got inside and sat near the door. There were only two other passengers--a middle-aged man and his more middle-aged wife. Pamela watched them languidly, in the mood to study other people. Her own life held nothing now but empty days and distasteful evenings. Dinner-time was coming--with Milligan, other men, perhaps--all the people who somehow made her feel contemptible, passively immoral. Their insults were so delicate, so flattering, that she could not resent them: to resent would be an admission. She just studied the dilemma of the middle-aged woman, who was very nervous, who expressed her preference for trams. “I’ll go nearer the door. Then, if there should be a spill, I could jump out.” She rustled along the seat, the stiff folds of her brocaded black skirt seeming to share her terror. Then she peppered the conductor with anxious queries, asking him if he didn’t think the driver was drunk. “Lor’, mum! he’s drove the ’bus for twenty year,” came the not altogether reassuring answer. “You think he’s really sober? But, oh conductor”--her voice rose to a shriek as the horses swerved--“I do wish I was on the Underground. I insist on getting out.” He rang his bell viciously and bundled her off the step. Her husband followed, looking keenly annoyed. Pamela smiled--scenting a marriage row. Then the blinding tears gushed to her eyes and burned there without falling. Marriage row! A vulgar, trivial squabble! She lived in a rain of them. “I’ll go outside,” she said, with a sudden desire for the sky above her head and the dry air on her face. She went with a sure foot up the steps and along the roof, the omnibus still moving, and took the one spare seat immediately behind the driver. Once she had been proud of her coolness and dispatch in climbing an omnibus. That was in the old days, when money was scarce and skirts shabby at the hem: the days when she had carved at table, accompanied songs, and made herself generally useful (attractive, so the advertisement stipulated) at the stuffy boarding-house near the British Museum. Edred had been one of the boarders--had paid thirty shillings a week, which was as much as he could afford out of his two pounds five weekly. Those were the days before he became a--number. She thought of it all, as she was carried by Kensington Gardens--occasional nights at a music-hall, merry waiting at pit doors, Sunday jaunts to Hampton Court--with a fresh summer gown, a smart cheap hat, and a constant dread of a shower. The women on the seat immediately opposite were talking volubly. They both had cheap black jackets with very big buttons and outstanding sleeves. One, as she talked, kept licking her lips and constantly popping out her tongue with odd vivacity and archness. The other, an older woman, with a severe expression, took an occasional solemn swig at a bottle which was genteelly wrapped to the nose in a confectioner’s paper bag.