He helped her into the car and tucked the linen rug round her with just that touch of familiarity which the good servant avoids. Maggy knew perfectly well what he and his wife thought about her. Unused as she was to servants, good or bad, she was quick enough to appreciate that they took their tone from their employer and his habits. She leant back in the car and gave herself up to the luxury of being driven in it. The celerity with which she was whirled from the affluence of Piccadilly and Regent Street to the grimy purlieus of the King’s Cross Road had a disheartening effect upon her. When the chauffeur stopped at her door she was sure she saw disparagement in his face. He would return to his own place and tell Woolf’s man and his wife to what sort of a lodging-house he had taken her, and they would make impertinent jokes at her expense. She despised herself for caring what the man thought or said. Alexandra wouldn’t have cared a button. She would have scorned the man for scorning her. She went upstairs slowly. The period of reaction had arrived. It depressed her. The lunch was over; the pleasant excitation Woolf’s company had aroused had died down. She felt "flat." To her surprise Alexandra was not in. She put the kettle on the gas-ring and took out their tea-cups from the cupboard where they were kept. She was rather glad she had got in before her friend. It would show how she cared about her, to have hurried home and made tea.... Good old Lexie! At the sound of steps outside she called out: "Hurry up, Lexie. Tea!" It was Mrs. Bell, not Alexandra. "I’ve brought the bill," she observed, depositing a half sheet of paper on the table. "I’d be glad to have it squared soon. You’re still one-ten behind." "We haven’t got it yet." "You’ll pay me soon? I shall have to let the room if you don’t. Letting’s all I have to depend on, you know. By the way, I ought to have told you, it’ll be seventeen and six a week now instead of fifteen. The rents of these houses have gone up." "Since I drove here in a car," snapped Maggy. "We’ll pay you and clear." "No, don’t do that, dearie. Can’t you just give me a bit on account?" Maggy opened her purse and held it upside down. She had given threepence to Woolf’s woman, and the remaining threepence to the chauffeur. They had despised the coppers, naturally, and barely thanked her. They would not have thanked her at all but for the possibility that they might see her again under more affluent circumstances. "Something’ll happen soon," said the woman, thinking of the car. "I’ll treat you kind because I’ve a kind ’eart." She stood away from the door to let Alexandra, who had come up, pass into the room. Maggy looked up quickly. Something was wrong. She saw it at once. "So I’ll let it stand over," went on Mrs. Bell. "The bill," she explained to Alexandra. "It seems as it’s not convenient for you to pay it yet. It’s disappointing, but I suppose—"