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Nothing but the bare outline and a few unimportant details have been used, and all the characters are entirely imaginary and are not portraits, in any way, of those connected with the actual crime of 1872 and the two arrests that followed.

Even where fiction has to follow fact as to type in dealing with detective, magistrate, landlady, waiter, etc., the characters that fulfil these parts are fictional and in no way even based upon those of the persons who were involved in the circumstances on which the first part of this novel is founded.

"YOU look as if you was going to cut your throat."

"Funny, Min, I was thinking of it."

"Got any beer or gin—a mouthful of the real 'knock me down'?"

"No, I haven't."

"Oh, ain't it shocking. Any luck for the pantomime?"

"No—I'm not sure—"

"I've had an offer for one dance and the chorus-but only twenty-five shillings."

"I can't get that, I don't think. Well what did you come in here for? I'm thinking of suicide, I tell you; a pity you disturbed me. Oh, I'm tired."

"Who isn't?"

Minnie Palmer flopped on to the broken stool inside the dressing-room underneath the stage; her dirty white muslin skirts and the tarnished spangles on her tattered bodice were crudely fashioned to represent the petals and calyx of a lily, a torn wig was pulled over her head, her small features were heavily outlined in cheap greasepaint.

The other woman glanced at her visitor with cool ease; she was seated by a deal table which was scattered with hares' feet, rags, glass jewels, pots of cream and rouge, odd thumbed playing cards, mugs and empty bottles—all flyblown and filthy.

Her green and red dress was meant to represent a moss rose, a green cap was tied over her yellow wig; her face, without make-up or powder, looked pallid, almost featureless in the harsh light of the gas-jet which, enclosed in a wire cage, flared from a bracket on the dirty plaster wall, above which were open rafters hung with cobwebs. This bare acrid flame was reflected in the three-cornered fragment of mirror that stood on the dressing-table.

"Why don't you get some paint on your face?" complained Minnie Palmer. "You look a sight."

"Go away—I haven't drink—no gin—no beer—no port wine."

"Who's got anything? You're unlucky, aren't you, dearie? I always thought you had such style, too—but no one seems to notice it."

The other's light-grey eyes flashed and hardened beneath the absurd curls of false hair.

"You little fool, who are you to notice anything? Leave me alone, can't you?"

"I want a bit of company—seems dismal here to-night--the last performance—the house isn't half-full, and outside it's as cold as hell—a black frost, too."

"Christmas Eve, darling. Don't forget to hang your stocking up."

"Well, you needn't speak so bitter." Minnie Palmer, the lily, stretched out her plump pink legs in wrinkling cotton flesh-coloured-stockings. "I've had a bottle of scent—'Jockey Club,' too—from Charlie—and Jim's coming along with some bottled porter and fruit from Covent Garden. Ain't you got anyone? Seems a pity—"

"That you interrupted me—yes—when I was about to cut my throat?" smiled Belle Adair; she picked up from the table a clasp-knife near a platter on which was an end of a loaf, a cold half-eaten red herring and some trimmings of ham fat.

"Well, I never! You needn't make such silly jokes," protested Minnie Palmer uneasily. "You always were a rum 'un, you were. Everyone says so—"

"Do they?"

"You don't make friends easy, do you? The girls are all a bit afraid of you, you know—"

"Are they?"

"I suppose it's because you're a lady."

"What makes you think that I'm—a—a 'lady'?" asked Belle, still fingering the knife; the steel plade was tarnished with vinegar drops.

"Anyone can see it; and a nice life of it you've had, to come to this, eh, Belle? Don't stare so, dearie. I like you."

Minnie Palmer rose, hesitated when she pulled open the door and looked into the dark passage and stairs on to which the dressing-rooms gave. The scrapings of the small orchestra sounded from the stage above.

"Pretty—isn't it? I'd like to dance to that—it's better than the music we've got; they're using it for the pantomime, too."

"It's old—The Sicilian Vespers.' I remember it in Paris. No, I don't, I don't remember anything." Belle put down the knife and, taking up the hare's foot, began to brush rouge into her pasty cheeks.

"You've been to Paris, have you?" sighed Minnie. "I'll bet you have, and other places, too. You're a rum 'un. Jenny's gone to Paris—he took her after all. My, it makes your mouth water—there's the great Exhibition next year and the Prince over there, and I don't know how many other Kings and Queens."

"Except the Queen of Spain, I suppose."

"Oh, they don't ask her—that's funny, ain't it? A Queen and no better than we are." Minnie Palmer laughed, yawned and stretched. "Wouldn't it be grand? Just to think of it makes you curl up inside—"

"Does it? What difference will it make to Jenny or would it make to you? Neither of you is so very pretty nor so very young, and neither of you has any talent at all. Think of all the charming creatures with money to spend who will be offering themselves for sale in Paris now."

"I don't like your way of putting things, I'm sure." Minnie Palmer tossed up her head with the artificial flaxen curls and dirty lilies, but her face was wrinkled as if she were about to cry. "The world's not so bad, sneer as you like, and we are better off than some. Poor Daisy's been round here again."

Belle Adair was carelessly rubbing powdered charcoal round her eyes as she interrupted in her low, incisive voice:

"Has she? She can't get work for the pantomime. They won't look at her."

"Doesn't she know it? She wanted to see you it was when you were on the stage—she's coming back."

"What for?" Belle blew the dust off the top of the rice powder in a lidless cardboard box printed with bunches of violets. "I see her every night."

"She said she was going out this evening, she wanted to borrow your salmon-pink feathers."

Belle Adair was silent; her face looked odd and ugly under the disfigurement of rice powder and rouge, her eyes were restless and impatient in the smudges of black.

Minnie Palmer rose; her healthy young body, inclined to fullness, seemed about to burst the sweat-stained, spangled bodice; she hitched up one of the sagging pink stockings and tightened the garter of frazzled ribbon.

"What would you give to get out of all this?" she asked vigorously, turning her insolent, good-humoured direct glance towards the red and green figure staring into the fragment of mirror. "I don't know how you stand it, that I don't. How do they think I'm going on in these shoes? Mind you, I went past Claridge's to-day—well, why shouldn't we have a taste of it? I mean we don't have any luck." Probing the other's silence she added: "You've known what it might be—before you got into trouble. Oh, I'm cold! A glass of port with a lot of sugar in it—or threepennyworth of 'cream of the valley'—haven't you sixpence, Belle, dear? Bobs would run for it in a moment. Just to warm us up before we go on?"

"I've nothing. You asked me what I'd give to get out of here? Well, I've nothing to give, don't you understand? Nothing to offer you for drink, nothing to give—nothing—"

"Stop a bit!" cried Minnie Palmer, in a half-whispering tone. "You frighten me speaking so cruel—it is Christmas Eve, as you said, and I mean to have some merry-making—"

"Go away! Go away!" Belle looked over her shoulder and spoke with quiet vehemence; Minnie, afraid, paused at the door.

"There's the call—well, don't you be late, or it will be the deuce and all—"

Tapping her small foot in the worn pink ballet shoe, Belle repeated:

"Go away!—will you, go away!"

Minnie Palmer hunched up her thick shoulders impudently, to cover her timidity.

"Oh, here's a set-out! Don't bother yourself, my pet, about me."

As soon as she had flounced away, Belle went swiftly to the cupboard, in the corner of which hung some theatrical dresses, skirts, gowns and shawls, bonnets and pairs of cloth boots which, tied by their laces, dangled from a peg. In the pocket of a trailing skirt of white gauze she found a flask of gin and with an air of dry reserve, tipped it up and drank.