The reason why Mrs. Askin never moved out of that back room was her profound conviction that all men were thieves, and collectors of old books the greatest. So, day in day out, she sat in a flocculent armchair which at night was turned into her bedstead, watching with a suspicious eye the behaviour of prospective customers. She was a dark unwieldy woman with a hairy chin, a profusion of tufted moles, and what was almost a heavy moustache. It was agreed when Nancy took the garret that she was not to expect any cooking to be done for her; and when she saw the Askins’ meals being prepared in that back room and Mr. and Mrs. Askin and Maudie each eating a disgusting plateful balanced on different heaps of incredibly dusty books, she did not regret the arrangement. She managed to make her own garret fairly clean; and though it was perishingly cold up there under the ancient roof, though the bed was hard and the rats scampered round inside the raw-boned plaster walls, she had the satisfaction of feeling perfectly sure that nowhere in London could she be lodged more cheaply. The solitude of the long, long evenings when she used to go to bed at eight o’clock in order to keep warm was immense; and yet she liked it, for she seemed, high up in this garret, to be as near to Bram as she could reach on earth. There was no blind to the decayed window of the dormer and, blowing out her candle, Nancy used to lie for hours staring out at the tawny London sky, while beneath her pillow Bram’s watch was always ticking, his watch that she had never allowed to run down. And once in sleep he held her in his arms, and once she woke with his kisses warm upon her lips; but mostly when she dreamed of that beloved lost one it was of running with him along endless platforms to catch fantastic and unattainable trains, and of acting with him in nightmare plays without having studied the part in which she was being suddenly called upon to appear. Meanwhile, it seemed that the tangible and visible world was fast dissolving into an unstable dream when Nancy, after three weeks of pawnshops and agents’ offices and of apparently being as far away as ever from any engagement, was persuaded by Maudie to hear her recite _The Lighthouse-Keeper’s Daughter_ and was asked at the end of it to advise her about a dramatic future. “I think you said it very well, Maudie,” Nancy assured the little maid, whose cheeks were flushed and whose eyes were flashing with excitement. “But I must really advise you to give up all idea of the stage as a profession. Look at me. I am an experienced actress and yet I can’t get an engagement. I’ve been trying ever since January, and now it’s nearly April. All the managers say I’m too tall; and you know, Maudie dear, you’re just as much the other way, aren’t you? You and I want special parts written for us, that’s the trouble.” The little maid’s eyes filled with tears.