As he was emerging from St James's Park into Victoria Street a woman accosted him. He looked at her, did not recognise her, and moved to pass on, for he was fastidious and took no interest in chance women. She was a little woman, very alert, and she was rather poorly dressed. She was young, but already her lips had stiffened into the hardness of baffled hope and passion and her eyes smouldered with that extraordinary glow which rouses a pity as cold as ice. 'I saw you were back in the papers,' she said. 'It's a pity you can't hide yourself.' Charles stared at her, stared and stared, cast about for some excuse for pretending not to know her but remained rooted. 'You're not so young as you were,' she went on. 'There's a lot of talk about you in the papers, but I know you; it's all talk.' 'My good woman,' said he, 'is that all you have to say?' 'It'll keep,' said she, and she turned abruptly and left him, feeling that all the strength had gone out of his legs, all the feeling from his bowels, leaving only a nauseating pity which brought up memory upon memory of horrible emotions, without any physical memory to fix them so that he was at their mercy. At last physical memories began to emerge, rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the arcades at Birmingham. And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her long ago; and at last her name. Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee in another. 'I had forgotten,' said Charles to himself. 'I really had forgotten. Well--money will settle it. I shall have to do _The Tempest_ for that fish.' Thinking of the money restored his sense of serenity. Wonderful money that can swamp so many ills: money that means work done somewhere--work, the sole solace of human misery. But Charles had no notion of the relation between work and money, or that in using up large quantities of it he was diverting to his own uses more than his fair share of the comfort of humanity. He had so much to give if only humanity would take--and pay for it. What he had to give was beyond price, wherefore he had no qualms in setting his price high.... From _The Tempest_ boundless wealth would flow. He quickly persuaded himself of that, and by the time he reached his furnished house had lulled his alarm to sleep and had allayed the disgust and loathing of the past roused in him by the meeting with Kitty Messenger.... So rosy had the vision become under the influence of his potential wealth that he met Clara without a qualm, and forgot even that Sir Henry was like a fish in an aquarium. 'We got on splendidly,' he said, 'and I am to have the whole theatre for _The Tempest_ in the Autumn.' 'I told you I was right,' said she. 'Bless you, child,' he cried. 'You always are, always. And now we will go out and drink champagne--Here's a health unto His Majesty, with a fal-lal-la.'