The halves of the uppers came piling steadily down.

Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the fingers, and towards the last she seemed one mass of dull, complaining muscles, fixed in an eternal position and performing a single mechanical movement which became more and more distasteful, until as last it was absolutely nauseating.

When she was wondering whether the strain would ever cease, a dull-sounding bell clanged somewhere down an elevator shaft, and the end came.

In an instant there was a buzz of action and conversation.

All the girls instantly left their stools and hurried away in an adjoining room, men passed through, coming from some department which opened on the right.