All that Peter saw, or filled in for himself, though it took shape in his mind, did not yet drive him into an attitude. He was interested. The sleeping wretches on the Embankment; men who stopped him for pence, women who stole about the streets by night, were all part of this vivid and varied life he was learning to know. It was not yet called to account. It was just observed. But the train was laid for an intellectual explosion. London waited to be branded as a city of slaves, with beggary in the streets and surfeit in men's houses. He went one evening to a theatre. A popular musical comedy was running into a second edition. Peter had never before visited a theatre since as a boy he had seen the plays of Shakespeare presented by a travelling company at home. He watched the people from an upper part of the house. The women attracted him most. They were more easily placed than the men. He could better imagine their lives. Their faces and clothes and manners were more eloquent of position and character. Peter was amazed at the diversity of the stalls--substantial dames, platitudes in flesh and blood, whom he instinctively matched with the men who lunched solidly to the east of Fleet Street; women, beside them, who breathed ineffable distinction; vivacious young girls bright with pleasure and health; women, beside them, boldly putting a final touch to an elaborate complexion. Other parts of the house were more of a kind. The balcony beneath him presented a solid front of formal linen and dresses in the mean of fashion. Topping all, in the gallery, was a dark array of people, notably drab in the electric blaze. Except from the conversation of his Oxford friends Peter was quite unprepared for the entertainment that followed. At first it merely bewildered him. The perfunctory sex pantomime between the principal players; recurring afflictions of the chorus into curious movements; the mechanical embracing and caressing; the perpetual erotic innuendo--this was all so unintelligible and strange, so entirely outside all that Peter felt and knew about life, that his imagination hesitated to receive it. Gradually, however, there stole into his brain a mild disgust. Finally there was a ballet. Its principal feature was a stocking dance. Eight young women appeared in underclothing, and eight of their total sixteen legs were clad in eight black stockings--the odd stockings being evenly divided. The first part of the ballet consisted in eight black stockings being drawn upon the eight legs which were bare. The second part of the ballet consisted in removing eight original black stockings from the legs adjacent. The ballet was performed to music intended to seduct, and the girls crooned an _obligato_ to the words, "Wouldn't you like to assist us?"