Harlson demanded comparative cleanliness at our table, and the food was fairly decent.

We ate, then smoked, and looked about us.
I have seen many people, and many strange faces, but never such a person nor such a face as of an old woman who sat at that early hour of the morning at a table near us.

The figure was a warped and withered caricature, the face that of a hag, a creature vixenish and viperish, and mean and crafty.

It was the face of a procuress of the lowest and most desperate type, of a deformed she-wolf of the slums, of the worst there is in all abandoned human nature, and Harlson was as interested as I was disgusted and repelled.

He noted the woman closely.
"By Jove! look there!" he said.
"What is it ?" "Look at her hand." I looked.