"It makes me sick," he said. "I never yet met a woman who knew how to love. If a man has an enthusiasm for anything outside themselves, they plot and scheme with their damnable cunning to kill it. They want the carcase of a man, not the lovely life in it. And if they're decent they want babies, which is almost worse if you're hard up. No, boy; for God's sake don't take women seriously. If you can't do without them, hate 'em. They'll lick your boots for it. They feed on hatred, and will take it out of your hand."
He talked in this strain until they reached the Tube station in Piccadilly Circus. It was unusually empty, and by the booking-office was standing a very pretty girl, big and upstanding. She had a wide mouth and curious slanting eyes, plump cheeks and a roguish tilt to her chin. She was well and neatly dressed, and Mendel judged her to be a shop-girl.
"That's a fine lass," said Logan. "Good-night, boy. I'll see you to-morrow and tell you about Cluny's."
"Good-night," said Mendel, still loath to see his friend go, and he suffered a pang of jealousy as he saw Logan go up to the girl, raise his hat, and speak to her. She started, blushed, and smiled. They stopped and talked together for a few moments, and then moved over towards the lift.
Mendel waited and watched them, Logan talking gaily, the girl smiling and watching him intently through her smile. With her eyes she took possession of him, and Mendel was filled with misgiving when he heard Logan's fat chuckle and the rustle and clatter of the gate as the lift descended. It reminded him oddly of the Demon King and the Fairy Queen in a pantomime he had once seen with Artie Beech, whose father used to get tickets for the gallery because he had play-bills in his shop window.
FOR Greta Morrison as for Mendel, London life had been opened up through Mitchell. He had been friendly and kind to her when everybody else had been harsh, fault-finding, and indifferent. Her first year and a half at the hostel had been a period of misery, for the girls and women there regarded her as odd, vague, and careless, and thought it their duty to impose on her the discipline she seemed to need, for they knew nothing of her suffering through her ambition and her work.