There was more time to be wasted, and she strolled down Shaftesbury Avenue and round Piccadilly Circus into Regent Street. The pavements were fairly crowded, and the multitude of lights made her feel less lonely. She loitered along, looking into shop windows, and she had amused herself in this way for about ten minutes before she became aware of another face that kept appearing near to hers. She saw it reflected in four successive windows, the face of an old man, spruce yet senile, the little moustache carefully trimmed, a faint red patch on either cheek. The eyes were turned to one side, and seemed to be watching something. She did not realise at first that that something was herself. “How are you to-night, dear?” Eve stared straight through the window for some seconds, and then turned and faced him. He was like Death valeted to perfection, and turned out with all his senility polished to the last finger nail. His lower eyelids were baggy, and innumerable little veins showed in the skin that looked tightly stretched over his nose and cheekbones. He smiled at her, the fingers of one hand picking at the lapel of his coat. “I am glad to see you looking so nice, dear. Supposing we have a little dinner?” “I beg your pardon. I think you must be rather short-sighted!” She thought as she walked away, “Supposing I had been a different sort of woman, and supposing I had been hungry!” She made direct for the river after this experience, and, turning down Charing Cross and under the railway bridge, saw the long sweep of the darkness between the fringes of yellow lights. There were very few people about, and a raw draught seemed to come up the river. She crossed to the Embankment and walked along, glancing over the parapet at the vaguely agitated and glimmering surface below. The huge shadow of the bridge seemed to take the river at one leap. The lapping of the water was cold, and suggestively restless. Then she turned her attention to the seats. They seemed to be full, packed from rail to rail with indistinct figures that were huddled close together. All these figures were mute and motionless. Once she saw a flutter of white where someone was picking broken food out of a piece of newspaper. And once she heard a figure speaking in a monotonous grumbling voice that kept the same level. Was she too late even for such a refuge? She walked on and at last discovered a seat where a gap showed between a man’s felt hat and a woman’s bonnet. Eve paused rather dubiously, shrinking from thrusting herself into that vacant space. She shrank from touching these sodden greasy things that had drifted like refuse into some sluggish backwater. Then a quiver of pity and of shame overcame her. She went and thrust herself into the vacant place. The whole seat seemed to wriggle and squirm. The man next to her heaved and woke up with a gulp. Eve discovered at once that his breath was not ambrosial.