. . As for friends, he had none. His work, his days spent with crowds of homunculi had given him a taste for solitude and the habit of it. He had prided himself on being a clubbable man and he had had many acquaintances, but not, in his life, one single human being to whom in his distress he wished to turn. He had liked the crowds through which he had wandered. They had given him the most comforting kind of solitude. He was distressed now that the streets were so empty; shops, public-houses, theaters were closed. How dreary the streets were! How aimless, haphazard and sprawling was the town! How aimless, haphazard and sprawling his own life in it had been! A woman passed him and breathed a hurried salute. He surveyed her with a detached, though warmly humorous, interest. She was, like himself, outcast, though she had found her feet and her own way of living. With the next woman he shook hands. She laughed at him. He raised his hat to the third. She stopped and stared at him, open-mouthed. As amazed, he stared at her. It was the young woman of the train. He could find nothing to say, nor she; neither could move. Feeling the necessity of a salute, he removed his hat, bowed, and, finding a direct approach impossible, shot off obliquely and absurdly. "I had once a German colleague who was a lavish and indiscriminate patron of the ladies of a certain profession. He resigned. I also have resigned." She said: "I'm sorry," and, having found her tongue, added: "Can you tell me the way to the Flat Iron Market. My aunt won't take me in." "Are you also in disgrace?" "Yes, sir. I was in service. It was the young master. I did love him, I did really." "You had been dismissed when I met you in the train?" "Yes, sir. They gave me a quarter of an hour to go, without wages, and they are sending on my box. My aunt won't take me in." Again in her eyes was the expression of helplessness and impotence in the face of distress that had so moved him, and once again he melted. He forgot his own situation and was only concerned to see that she should not come to harm or be thrown destitute upon a cold, a busy, harsh, and indifferent world. Upon his inquiry as to the state of her purse, she told him she had only a shilling, and he pressed half a sovereign into her hand. Then he asked her why she wished to find the Flat Iron Market, and she informed him she had an uncle, Mr. Copas, who was there. She had only seen him twice, but he had been kind to her mother when she was alive, although he was not respectable. They were directed by a policeman, and as they walked Beenham gave her the story of his experience at the police station and how he had accepted the Chief Constable's ultimatum. And he employed the opportunity to complete his explanation of his extraordinary lapse from decorum. "You can do silly things when you're half awake," said Matilda. "It's like being in love, isn't it?" "I have never been in love."