midday
She walked down a passage to a lift , and so came to one of the streets of that latter-day London , all glazed in with glass from the weather , and with incessant moving platforms that went to all parts of the city . And by one of these she returned to her apartments in the Hotel for Women where she lived , the apartments that were in telephonic communication with all the best lecturers in the world . But the sunlight of the flying stage was in her heart , and the wisdom of all the best lecturers in the world seemed folly in that light . She spent the middle part of the day in the gymnasium , and took her midday meal with two other girls and their common chaperone -- for it was still the custom to have a chaperone in the case of motherless girls of the more prosperous classes . The chaperone had a visitor that day , a man in green and yellow , with a white face and vivid eyes , who talked amazingly . Among other things , he fell to praising a new historical romance that one of the great popular story-tellers of the day had just put forth . It was , of course , about the spacious times of Queen Victoria ; and the author , among other pleasing novelties , made a little argument before each section of the story , in imitation of the chapter headings of the old-fashioned books : as for example , `` How the Cabmen of Pimlico stopped the Victoria Omnibuses , and of the Great Fight in Palace Yard , '' and `` How the Piccadilly Policeman was slain in the midst of his Duty . ''