The pair ascended to the street, and after standing on the kerb for a few moments entered a tram car, while I climbed on top. I had been careful that Muriel should not detect me, and now felt a certain amount of satisfaction in tracking her to her abode, although I confess to a fierce jealousy of this shabby, miserable specimen of manhood who accompanied her. Up the Caledonian Road to the junction of Camden Road with Holloway Road they travelled, alighting in the latter road, and walking slowly along, still deep in earnest conversation, until they came to the row of shops owned by Spicer Brothers, a firm of drapers of that character known in the trade as a "cutting" house, or one who sold goods at the lowest possible price. It was, of course, closed at that hour, but its exterior was imposing, one of those huge establishments which of late years have sprung up in the various residential centres of London. Before the private door a couple of over-dressed young men lounged, smoking cheap cigars, and within a watchman sat in a small box, like the stage-door keeper of a theatre. Muriel and her lean cavalier paused for a moment, then they shook hands, and with a final word parted; he turned back City-wards, and she entered the door, receiving a rough, familiar greeting from the two caddish young assistants, who were not sufficiently polite to raise their hats to her. I stood watching the man's disappearing figure, and hesitated. But even as I waited there I saw him emerge into the road and enter a passing tram. The reason I did not follow him was because I was too confounded in my feelings. Muriel was my chief thought. I hated this man, and entertained no desire to seek further who or what he was. I knew him to be an associate of Aline. That was sufficient. I noted the shop well, and the door at which my love had entered, then seeing that it was already ten o'clock, the hour when female shop-assistants are expected to be in, I turned reluctantly and took a cab back to my chambers. At six o'clock next evening, I entered the establishment on a small pretext, and ascertained from one of the employes that they closed at seven. Therefore I smoked a cigar in the crowded saloon of the Nag's Head until that hour, when, together with a number of other loungers, I waited at the door from which the slaves of the counters and the workrooms, male and female, soon began to emerge, eager to breathe the fresh air after the weary hours in the stifling atmosphere, heavy with that peculiar odour of humanity and "goods" that ever pervades the cheap drapers'. After waiting nearly half an hour Muriel at last came forth, dressed neatly in cotton blouse and dark skirt, with a large black hat. She went to the kerb, glanced up and down the broad thoroughfare, as if looking for an omnibus or tram, then, there being none in sight, she commenced to walk along the Holloway Road in the direction of the City.