THE VIRGIN WITH THE LAMP
craning of her neck enabled her to see. Then there was silence for minutes. Again the sound broke forth, and with it confused shoutings of a name she could not make out. Yes—what was it? Mistitch—Mistitch! That was her first hearing of the name.
Silence fell again, and she sank back into her chair. The lights, the stir, the revelry were not for her, nor the cheers nor the shouts. A moment of reaction and lassitude came on her, a moment when the present, the actual, lapped her round with its dim, muddy flood of vulgar necessity and sordid needs. With a sob she bowed her head to meet her hands—a sob that moaned a famine of life, of light, of love. "Go back to your scullery, Sophy Grouch!"
What voice had said that? She sprang to her feet with fists clinched, and whispered to the darkness:
"No!"
In the street below, Mistitch slapped his thigh.
Sophy pushed her hair back from her heated forehead and looked out of the window. To the right, some twenty yards away and just at the end of the street, she saw the figures of three men. In the middle was one who bulked like a young Falstaff—Falstaff with his paunch not grown; he was flanked by two lean fellows who looked small beside him. She could not see the faces plainly, since the light from the Square was behind them. They seemed to be standing there and looking past the sign of the Silver Cock along the street.
A measured, military footfall sounded on her left. Turning her head, she saw a young man walking with head bent down and arms behind him. The line of light struck full on him, he was plain to see as by broadest day. He wore a costume strange to her eyes—a black sheepskin cap, a sheepskin tunic,
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