She had been walking for more than an hour when she noticed that the houses were scattered, with open spaces now and then, and a bracing freshness in the air which suggested that she was getting away from where the herds of London slept, into open spaces.

For some obscure reason this made her nervous, and she turned back.

After a while London closed in on her again, but this time in a more squalid quarter, a wilderness of dirty narrow streets, where even in the darkness the debasing marks and odours of squalid poverty were perceptible in the endless rows of houses which seemed to crowd in upon her.

She came to a bridge and crossed it into an area of gaunt and darkened factories.

Here, strange nocturnal noises and sights frightened her.