He gave way with a shrug, and she went up to get her furs. It was a clear day with little wind and a fine red sun. The frost had not broken, and these two went down toward a city over which loomed the menace of a peril terrible beyond imagination. But of this the suburbs said nothing. Here and there a baker would have a flaring bill in his window; there were advertisements and appeals upon some of the hoardings, but few stopped to read them. Such idlers as gathered at the street corners had long exhausted the only topic of conversation and smoked in silence when they did not beg in companies. "Bread, for the love of God!" was the chant of gangs of impostors whose corduroys were no ornament to streets of red brick. 'Buses, trams and taxis seemed quite unaware of a crisis. The newspapers alone were hysterical. They were covered with flaring black headlines. Harry had engaged a taxi, and he took her for a drive round Hyde Park before going on to the Savoy Café for luncheon. There were a few horsemen in the Row, but they looked cold enough, and Maryska, who had seen the Italian cavalry ride, thought but little of their performance. For the most part, the big houses in the West End were left to Jeames and his humours. It would have been unfair to the owners of these to say that panic had driven them away. They were just wintering at Cannes or Monte or Aix as they always did. Out there, the news from England seemed very dubious; it was almost impossible to believe that such consequences had attended the severity of the winter. Here in Western London, the intensity of the cold, the relentless winds, the bitter weather taught men to incline an ear to every rumour. Perhaps even the sanest critic experienced a new sensation when he stood apart and asked himself if it were true that the sea might freeze from Calais to Dover. A menace of an unknown peril troubled all; the East End alone gave tongue to it. They went down St. James' Street and turned into Pall Mall. Here their taxi was held up by a howling mob, indulging in the ancient and amusing pastime of breaking the windows of the clubs. Did a politician as much as show a nose at a window-pane and a shower of stones rewarded long years of salaried labour or unfeed eloquence. Was he not one of those who pocketed the profits the bakers were making?--and if he did not, was he not, at any rate, "capital in a black coat"; and where would you have a better target? The hulking youths, who rattled their money-boxes offensively in every face, cared much about beer and little about bread, but that little had become rather a grim reality these later days. They saw men, and, women, too, dying, down East of absolute starvation--the ghosts of the "might be" stood at their elbow and whispered "Better the jewellers' shops than the mortuaries." And to Bond Street they went, adding to their numbers quickly and uttering bolder threats. "Bread or death!" An odour of beer was the incense to this prayer.