At the door of the Criterion Restaurant an enormously fat and
white bookmaker in a curly hat and diamonds muttered remarks into the
ear of an unshaven music-hall singer. A gigantic "chucker-out" observed
them with the dull gaze of sullen habit, and a beggar-boy whined to them
in vain for alms, then fluttered into obscurity. Fixed with corner stones
upon the wet pavement of the "island" lay in an unwinking row the
contents bill of the evening papers, proclaiming in gigantic black or
red letters the facts of suicide, slander, divorce, murder, railway
accidents, fires, and war complications. Dreary men read them with
dreary, unexcited eyes, then forked out halfpence to raucous youths
whose arms were full of damp sheets of pink paper. A Guardsman kissed
"good-bye" to his trembling sweetheart as he chivalrously assisted her
into a Marylebone 'bus, and two shop-girls, going home from work, nudged
each other and giggled hysterically. Four fat Frenchmen stood in the
porch of the Monico violently gesticulating and talking volubly at the
tops of their voices. Two English undergraduates pushed past them with
a look of contempt, and went speechlessly into the caf? beyond. A lady
from Paris, all red velvet and white ostrich-tips, smoothed her cheek
with her kid glove meditatively, and glanced about in search of her fate
of the dark and silent hours.
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