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I said what a pretty little watch it was; she was pleased, and took it off to show it to me. “A gentleman friend gave it to me,” she said, “when I was working at Leicester. He was nice to me—isn’t it lovely? It cost six pounds fifteen, and then he got something off because it was through a friend in the business. Another gentleman told me that you couldn’t buy a watch like this for under ten pounds. Fancy! But lots of the gentlemen give us quite nice presents.” I murmured something or other, and for a moment she paused to appraise my value. “He was married, but his wife used to go away a lot and then he got lonely and used to come and spend the evening with me. Are you married?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not. Are you?”

She studied me for a moment through a haze of smoke. “No,” she said at last, “nor anywhere near it.”

She told me that her name was Miss Gordon, but her friends called her Mollie. “I do think it’s soft,” she said, “when professionals make up fancy names for themselves, like Edwina or Althea, like some of them do.” She laughed. “Fancy me talking like that! I mean, they call me Carmen here on Friday nights, because I do a speciality dance then—tango—I’ve got a lovely costume for it. I do it with one of the boys here, and he’s in costume too.” Then we talked about her profession; she told me that she was paid ten shillings a week and half the sixpences she earned. “But then there’s the tips,” she said, with studied nonchalance. “Some of the gentlemen are very generous. Then other times you’ll dance all night with a gentleman and never get a bean beyond the sixpences.”