There was a brief conversation between Danny and the Gonners, after which Mr. Gonner returned to his task of cutting some very fat bacon into rashers and Mrs. Gonner held up the flap of the counter for Sylvia and Danny to pass up-stairs through the back of the shop. For one moment Sylvia hesitated when the flap dropped back into its place, for it seemed to make dangerously irrevocable her admittance to the unknown house above; Danny saw her hesitation and with a word or two of encouragement checked her impulse to go no farther. Mrs. Gonner led the way up-stairs and showed them into a bedroom prematurely darkened by coarse lace curtains that shut out the fading daylight. Sylvia had a vague impression of too much furniture, which was confirmed when Mrs. Gonner lit a gas-jet over the mantelpiece; she looked round distastefully at the double-bed pushed against the wall, at the crimson vases painted with butterflies, at the faded oleograph of two children on the edge of a precipice with a guardian angel behind them, whose face had at some time been eaten away by mice. There was a short silence, only broken by Mrs. Gonner's whispering breath. "We shall be all right here, kid, eh?" exclaimed Danny, in a tone that was at once suave and boisterous. "What's your room like?" Sylvia asked. He looked at her a moment, seemed about to speak, thought better of it, and turned to Mrs. Gonner, who told Danny that he could have the front room as well if he wanted it; they moved along the passage to inspect this room, which was much larger and better lighted than the other and was pleasantly filled with the noise of traffic. Sylvia immediately declared that she preferred to be here. "So I'm to have the rabbit-hutch," said Danny, laughing easily. "Trust a woman to have her own way! That's right, isn't it, Mrs. Gonner?" Mrs. Gonner stared at Sylvia a moment, and murmured that she had long ago forgotten what she wanted, but that, anyway, for her one thing was the same as another, which Sylvia was very ready to believe. When Mrs. Gonner had left the room, Danny told Sylvia that he must go and get a few things together from his flat in Shaftsbury Avenue, and asked if she would wait till he came back. "Of course I'll wait," she told him. "Do you think I want to run away twice in one day?" Danny still hesitated, and she wondered why he should expect her, who was so much used to being left alone, to mind waiting for him an hour or two. "We might go to the Mo to-night," he suggested. She looked blank. "The Middlesex," he explained. "It's a music-hall. Be a good girl while I'm out. I'll bring you back some chocolates." He seemed anxious to retain her with the hint of pleasures that were in his power to confer; it made Sylvia impatient that he should rely on them rather than upon her capacity for knowing her own mind. "I may be young," she said, "but I do know what I want. I'm not like that woman down-stairs."