The light from the
green-shaded lamp above her, fell obliquely on her head. It lit up
her pale, golden hair like a sun-ray; it drew out the round, gentle
curve of her face and threw it up against the darkness of the room
beyond. So well as it could, with its harsh methods, it made a picture.
One instinctively paused to look at it. A man coming out of the
shadows of the Covent Garden Market stopped as he passed down King
Street and gazed up at the window.
For five minutes he stood and watched her, assuming, by looking up
and down the street when anybody passed him by, the attitude of a
person who is waiting for some one.
It is impossible to say whether it is really the woman herself, or
a combination of the woman and the moment, which seizes and drags
a man's attention towards her. In this case it may have been the
combined result of the two. The girl was pretty. In the ray of that
electric light, the soft, childish outline of her face and the pale,
sensuous strands of her hair were probably lent a glamour such as
that given by the footlights. The man, too, was on his way back to
companionless chambers. The lower end of Regent Street may be a far
from lonely spot in which to take up one's abode; but there is nothing
so empty as an empty room, no matter on to what crowded thoroughfare
it may look.
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