There was, second, the compliance of Mr. Rossiter and the coming noviciate under Darley. Deliberately he had left her in her country clothes, trusting them to disguise in the Rossiter offices a quality he did not wish to be clearly apparent yet: deliberately, he had rushed her affair thinking all the while of Darley--or if not of him, of a Darley, of some crude martinet who was to lick her into shape. He wanted her ill-dressed, he wanted her bewildered. He wanted Darley to know how raw she was; he wanted hot fire for her and he saw her Staithley clothes acting upon Darley like compressed air on a blast furnace. The girl was too cool, she showed no nervousness. “Darley will teach you to feel, my girl,” he thought: “I’m making your path short, but I don’t want it smooth. Soft places don’t make actresses. I’m cruel to be kind.” And being kind he advanced her two pounds on account of commission, told her the station for Torquay was Paddington and left her on Rossiter’s steps. He had exposed himself unavoidably to the lifted brows which could not help saluting the glossy Lexley Chown in the company of these obsolete clothes, but the necessity was past now and he lost no time in indicating to her that, for better or for worse, her future was in her own hands. He had other business to attend to. Mary Ellen, who had surrendered herself confidingly to his large protectiveness, was braced by his departure. Their journey together, the wonder of lunching at a table in a train, the oppressiveness of offices--these were behind her now and she stood on Rossiter’s busy steps breathing hard like a swimmer who comes to surface after a long dive. She breathed the air of London and looked from that office down a street across Piccadilly Circus, nameless to her. The whirl of it assaulted her; the swimmer was in the breakers now. Mr. Rossiter’s commissionaire, not unaccustomed to the sight of young women pausing distressfully on those steps where they had left their hopes behind them, addressed her with kindly intent. “Shall I get you a taxi, miss?” “No, thanks,” said Mary Ellen, who had noted the immense sums Mr. Chown had paid to the drivers of those vehicles. “I’ll walk,” and “others walk” she thought. “I can do what they can,” and hardily set foot upon the London streets. Let that commissionaire perceive that Mary Ellen was afraid? Not she, and presently she was so little afraid that she asked the way to Euston of a policeman. Her suit-case--in strict fact, Mr. Pate’s suitcase--was at Euston.