This was the country which was to transform her. She was determined that in most things she would be transformed. The simple clerk at the Glue Works (for she saw, more clearly every day, how simple she had been) would, after experiences which would deepen and ripen her emotional nature, change into the internationally-known diva. She would never forget her family, of course, and she would certainly never be a loose-liver, as some internationally-known divas had so reprehensibly been, but she would no longer be bound by the chains of the Thirteeners or the social habits of Salterton. Monica Gall, the internationally-known diva.

The name was not quite right. Indeed, the more often she repeated it, the less appropriate it sounded. Gall, in particular, would not do. An Irish name, Aunt Ellen had explained. Would it be better changed to Gallo, perhaps? Monique Gallo? Distinguished in appearance, with a spiritual beauty which seemed to shine from within, elegant yet simple in manner, living solely for her art and yet a familiar figure in the best society in Europe, Monique Gallo took shape in her mind. Monique Gallo, robed as Norma, acknowledging the applause of a vast audience before the curtains of a great opera house; Monique Gallo, in a black velvet gown relieved only by a few fine diamonds, graciously bowing at the end of a recital, while her accompanist wiped away his tears of pure artistic joy; Monique Gallo being drawn in torchlit triumph through the streets of Prague by a crowd of enthusiastic students, who had taken the horses out of her carriage… Why horses; why a carriage? Oh, probably a temporary gasoline shortage… Monique Gallo, who sang every kind of music with unmatchable understanding, concluding her recital with some simple, lovely ballad which left not a dry eye in the house. Monique Gallo telling stricken young men (not a bit like foremen at a Glue Works) that she must live for her art alone—an attitude which, while it broke their hearts, compelled them to love her all the more.

The apple and the ginger ale had been gone for perhaps half an hour before the picture began to darken. Not Monique Gallo now, but plain Monica Gall was musing on the plain words of Humphrey Cobbler when last she had seen him—”chances are about a hundred to one that your voice is any better than scores of others; only work will tell the tale; this Bridgetower thing is really pretty much a fluke.” Well, it was a chance. She could always go back home and get a job.

The Duchess of Richmond climbed higher peaks, shivered more terribly, plunged in corkscrew fashion to even more abysmal depths. Monica turned very cold, broke into an icy sweat, and was noisily, searchingly sick into the rattling container… And again… And (Oh God, have mercy!) again.

“Miss Gall, from Canada? I’m from Jodrell and Stanhope. Here’s my card—Frederick Boykin. I’ll see to your luggage. Hope you had a pleasant voyage? Well, yes, I suppose it’s bound to be a bit rough this time of year. Yes, it is a little foggy, but that’s common in London, you know. Oh dear no, this isn’t a real London fog; just a bit of a haze. Taxi! That’s right, three cases and a trunk. Well, you can put two of the cases on the roof, can’t you? You get inside Miss Gall, and I’ll see to this… There; that’s that. They hate trunks. Can’t think why; they charge enough for ‘em. Now, my instructions are to take you to Marylebone Road—Three Arts Club—ladies’ club, very respectable, and you’ll see Mr Andrews tomorrow. Pity you can’t see more out of the window. I suppose you saw a good deal of England coming down on the boat-train? Raining all the way? But you expected that, you say? Well I suppose it does seem queer to you, coming from all your snow, and so forth… The smell? I can’t really say that I’d noticed any smell. Bit smoky, perhaps, but that’s because of the haze—keeps the smoke down… Here we are; you go right ahead, I’ll attend to everything. They’re expecting you.”

Thus, within a quarter of an hour of her arrival in London, Monica found herself in a very small room, with nothing whatever to do. She had liked Mr Boykin, who was stout without being fat, and cheerful in what she supposed was the traditional Cockney way, and knew what he was doing. She had not so much liked the secretary of the Club, who was a very competent lady with a brand of genteel, impersonal hospitality which was new to Monica, and chilling. And what was she to do now?

She would read her book. Before leaving Canada she had laid in intellectual provision—in the form of War and Peace, in a single large, heavy volume, complete with maps of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, and an informative introduction by a celebrated critic. Under normal circumstances she would never have considered tackling such a cultural monster, but it seemed appropriate to the new life she was going to live. Aunt Ellen had advised it, for her dead fiancé had often spoken of War and Peace as the greatest of all novels. To read it would undoubtedly result in permanent mental enrichment. Seasickness had come between Monica and Tolstoy on the voyage, and she had read, in all, four confusing pages. She would get down to serious work on it now.

Many travellers have discovered that a book which seems strikingly appropriate in one country is insupportably tedious in another; the Lost Property offices of the world’s airports are heavily stocked with volumes which have not travelled well. In less than ten minutes Monica had decided that Anna Pavlovna Sherer’s party was not precisely what she needed at the moment (though unquestionably cultural); she was in the greatest city in the world, and she did not want to waste time sitting in a little room, with a bad light and a funny smell, reading about people who did not seem certain what their own names were. She would go for a walk.

The genteel secretary caught her in the hall, and cautioned her not to go far, not to get herself lost, and to appeal to a policeman if she did so. This was dampening to Monica’s spirits, as was also the smell of Marylebone Road, which was just like that of her bedroom, only more intense and wet.

It was a sour, heavy smell; a wet smell, of course, in which the smoke of soft coal played a large part. But it was not a constant smell. Sometimes the soft coal was so powerful that Monica choked a little; and then, in a few yards, it would have changed to a smell like damp mattresses; once, Monica was reminded of the time when a wool warehouse had burned down in Salterton. It was not an actively unpleasant smell; indeed, it had a caressing friendliness about it—almost a familiarity, as though she had known this smell at some earlier time in her life, and were encountering it again. But in spite of this delusive familiarity the smell was the queerest thing Monica met in the Marylebone Road, which seemed to her, in other respects, not greatly unlike Toronto.

Baker Street. Had she, at some time, heard something about Baker Street? Nothing came to mind, and yet there seemed to be some familiarity in the address. The street names were pleasant; Nottingham, Devonshire, Harley—wasn’t there something about Harley Street? It was odd; being in London was like being in a dream, or in a life you had lived before, in which things seemed to have meaning but wouldn’t be pinned down.

But she had been warned not to go too far, and the haze seemed to be increasing as the light failed. She found her way back to the Club without difficulty, listening as she walked to the unfamiliar voices—some of them very hoarse and almost incomprehensible. The secretary shot a meaningless, professional smile at her as she passed the office door.

The smell inside the Club had deepened, and was a little warmer than it had been before, and there was a heavy premonition of food in it now. Monica lay on her bed until the gong sounded for dinner, and thought about Monique Gallo, to whom London and all the capitals of the world would seem like home.