His mind was occupied by violent thoughts about the two children whom he had fed with currant pudding, and he did not observe what he was doing or where he was going. He was in a wide, dark street where there were tram-lines, but he could not remember seeing a tramcar pass by. He was tired and although he was not hungry, he was conscious of a missed meal, and he was thirsty. "I'd better turn back," he said to himself, turning as he did so. He wondered where he was, and he resolved that he would ask the first policeman he met to tell him in what part of London he now was and what was the quickest way to get out of it.

"It was silly of me to come here at all," he murmured, and then he turned quickly and stared across the street.

A woman had screamed somewhere near by ... on the other side of the street, he thought ... and as he looked, he saw figures struggling, and then they parted and one of them, a woman, ran away towards a lamppost, holding her hands before her in an appealing fashion, and crying, "Oh, don't! Don't hit me!..." The other figure was that of a man, and as the woman shrank from him, the man advanced towards her with his fist uplifted....

Henry could feel himself shrinking back into the shadow.

"He's going to hit her," he was saying to himself, and he closed his eyes, afraid lest he should see the man's fist smashing into the woman's face. He could hear a foul oath uttered by the man and the woman's scream as she retreated still further from him ... and then, trembling with fright, he ran across the street and thrust himself between them. "Oh, my God, what am I doing?" he moaned to himself as he stood in the glare of the yellow light that fell from the street lamp. He felt rather than saw that the woman had risen from the ground and run away the moment the man's attention was distracted from her, and a shudder of fear ran through him as he realised that he was alone. He could see the man's brutal face and his blazing, drink-inflamed eyes, and in the middle of his fear, he thought how ugly the man's eyebrows were ... one long, black line from eye to eye across the top of his nose. The man, his fist clenched and raised, advanced towards him. "He's going to hit me now," Henry thought. "He'll knock me down and ... and kick me!... These people always kick you!..."

He stood still waiting for the blow, mesmerised by the man's blazing eyes; but the man, though his fist was still clenched, did not strike him. He reeled up to him so closely that Henry was sickened by the smell of his drink-sodden breath. "Fight for a woman, would you?" he shouted at him. "Eih? P'tect a woman, would you?..."

Henry wanted to laugh. The man was repeating phrases from melodramas!...

"Tyke a woman's part, eih? I know you, you bloody toff! You ... you think you're a bloody 'ero, eih, p'tectin' a woman from 'er 'usband!" He pushed Henry aside, almost falling on the pavement as he did so. "I've a goo' mind to break your bloody neck for you, see, bloody toff, interferin' ... 'usband an' wife. See? Thash what I'll do!..."

He came again at Henry, but still he did not strike. He mumbled his melodramatic phrases, swaying in front of Henry, and threatening to break his neck and punch his jaw and give him a thick ear, but he did no more than that, and while he threatened, a crowd gathered out of the shadows, and a woman, with bare arms, touched Henry's arm and drew him away from the drunken man. "You 'op it, mister," she said, "or you'll get 'urt!" She pushed him out of the crowd, slapping a lad in the face who had jostled him and said, "Gawblimey, look at Percy!" and when she had got him away from them, she told him again to 'op it.

"Thank you!..." he began.

"Don't you wyste no time, mister, but 'op it quick," she interrupted, giving him a push forward.

"But I don't know where I am," he replied.

"Dunno w'ere you are!... Well, of course, you look like that! You're in Bermondsey, mister, an' if you tyke my advice you'll go 'ome an' sty 'ome. People like you didden ought to be let out alone! You go 'ome to your mother, sir! The first turnin' on the right'll bring you to the trams...."

He did as she told him, hurrying away from the dark street as quickly as he could. He was trembling. Every nerve in his body seemed to be strained, and his eyes had the tired feel they always had when he was deeply agitated.

"My God," he said, "what an ass I was to do that!"