"Of course she does," said Clowes, rather bored with his persistence. "But she doesn't write to me." "You don't write to her. You can't expect her to fall at your feet." As she said this Clowes realized his extraordinary Orientalism. She could see him holding up his finger and expecting a woman to come at his bidding, and for a moment she was repelled by him. But she was a kind-hearted creature and felt very sorry for him, for he seemed so utterly at sea and was obviously full of genuine and painful emotion. He detected her repulsion at once and perceived the effort she made to conquer it, and was at once grateful to her, for, as a rule, when that happened, people let it swamp everything else. She said:-- "I'll tell Greta what you have said to me, and I am sure she will be very sorry to have hurt you." "I only want her to come and sit for her portrait. It is very important to me, because I want to try new subjects and there is some lovely drawing in her face." "But you mustn't knock Mitchell down. He is quite a nice boy, really, only a little wild." "He is rotten," said Mendel dogmatically. * * * * * He felt better, and until dinner-time he prowled about Tottenham Court Road and Soho, a region of London that he particularly loved--a vibrant, nondescript region where innumerable streams of vitality met and fused, or clashed together to make a froth and a spume. It was like himself, chaotic and rawly alive, compounded of elements that knew no tradition or had escaped from it. He felt at home in it, and elated because he was also conscious of being superior to it, yet without the dizzy sense of superiority that assailed him among his own people, while he was never shocked and humiliated, as he was sometimes in sedate and prosperous London, by being made suddenly to realize his external inferiority. He loved the shop-girls hurrying excitedly from their work to their pleasure, and he sometimes spoke to them in their own slang, sometimes went home with them. . . . They always liked him because he never wasted time over silly flirtatious jokes or pretended to be in love with them. His interest and curiosity, like theirs, were purely physical, and his passion gave them a delicious sense of danger. * * * * * Logan was waiting for him at the Pot-au-Feu. There was no one else in the restaurant but the goggle-eyed man in his corner. Logan was sitting Napoleonically with his arms on the table and his chin sunk on his chest, with his lips compressed. He nodded, but did not get up. "Sorry if I'm late," said Mendel. "I went for a walk. I couldn't work to-day. My sister-in-law's sofa--I feel as if I had been beaten all over." "That's the walk home," said Logan. "I'm used to it. The hours I've spent walking about this infernal London! I've slept on the Embankment, you know." "No?" "Yes. I've been as far down as that, though I'm not the sort of man who can be kept down. Did you know that Napoleon was out-at-elbows for a whole year?"