Passed

“Like souls that meeting pass,
And passing never meet again.”

LET those who have missed a romantic view of London in its
poorest quarters —and there will romance be found— wait
for a sunset in early winter. They may turn North or South,
towards Islington or Westminster, and encounter some fine
pictures and more than one aspect of unique beauty. This hour
of pink twilight has its monopoly of effects. Some of them may
never be reached again.

On such an evening in mid-December, I put down my sewing
and left tame glories of fire-light (discoverers of false charm) to
welcome, as youth may, the contrast of keen air outdoors to the
glow within.

My aim was the perfection of a latent appetite, for I had no
mind to content myself with an apology for hunger, consequent
on a warmly passive afternoon.

The splendid cold of fierce frost set my spirit dancing. The
road rung hard underfoot, and through the lonely squares woke
sharp echoes from behind. This stinging air assailed my cheeks
with vigorous severity. It stirred my blood grandly, and brought

                                                thought

thought back to me from the warm embers just forsaken, with an
immeasurable sense of gain.

But after the first delirium of enchanting motion, destination
became a question. The dim trees behind the dingy enclosures
were beginning to be succeeded by rows of flaring gas jets, dis-
playing shops of new aspect and evil smell. Then the heavy walls
of a partially demolished prison reared themselves darkly against
the pale sky.

By this landmark I recalled— alas that it should be possible
—a church in the district, newly built by an infallible architect,
which I had been directed to seek at leisure. I did so now. A
row of cramped houses, with the unpardonable bow window,
projecting squalor into prominence, came into view. Robbing
these even of light, the portentous walls stood a silent curse
before them. I think they were blasting the hopes of the
sad dwellers beneath them —if hope they had —to despair.
Through spattered panes faces of diseased and dirty children
leered into the street. One room, as I passed, seemed full of
them. The window was open ; their wails and maddening re-
quirements sent out the mother’s cry. It was thrown back to
her, mingled with her children’s screams, from the pitiless prison
walls.

These shelters struck my thought as travesties— perhaps they
were not —of the grand place called home.

Leaving them I sought the essential of which they were bereft.
What withheld from them, as poverty and sin could not, a title
to the sacred name ?

An answer came, but interpretation was delayed. Theirs was
not the desolation of something lost, but of something that had
never been. I thrust off speculation gladly here, and fronted
Nature free.

                                                Suddenly

Suddenly I emerged from the intolerable shadow of the brick-
work, breathing easily once more. Before me lay a roomy space,
nearly square, bounded by three-storey dwellings, and transformed,
as if by quick mechanism, with colours of sunset. Red and
golden spots wavered in the panes of the low scattered houses
round the bewildering expanse. Overhead a faint crimson sky
was hung with violet clouds, obscured by the smoke and nearing
dusk.

In the centre, but towards the left, stood an old stone pump,
and some few feet above it irregular lamps looked down. They
were planted on a square of paving railed in by broken iron fences,
whose paint, now discoloured, had once been white. Narrow
streets cut in five directions from the open roadway. Their lines
of light sank dimly into distance, mocking the stars’ entrance into
the fading sky. Everything was transfigured in the illuminated
twilight. As I stood, the dying sun caught the rough edges of a
girl’s uncovered hair, and hung a faint nimbus round her poor
desecrated face. The soft circle, as she glanced toward me, lent
it the semblance of one of those mystically pictured faces of some
mediaeval saint.

A stillness stole on, and about the square dim figures hurried
along, leaving me stationary in existence (I was thinking fanci-
fully), when my mediaeval saint demanded ” who I was a-shoving
of? ” and dismissed me, not unkindly, on my way. Hawkers in a
neighbouring alley were calling, and the monotonous ting-ting of
the muffin-bell made an audible background to the picture. I
left it, and then the glamour was already passing. In a little
while darkness possessing it, the place would reassume its aspect of
sordid gloom.

There is a street not far from there, bearing a name that
quickens life within one, by the vision it summons of a most

                                                peaceful

peaceful country, where the broad roads are but pathways through
green meadows, and your footstep keeps the time to a gentle music
of pure streams. There the scent of roses, and the first pushing
buds of spring, mark the seasons, and the birds call out faithfully
the time and manner of the day. Here Easter is heralded by the
advent in some squalid mart of air-balls on Good Friday ; early
summer and late may be known by observation of that un-
romantic yet authentic calendar in which alley-tors, tip-cat,
whip- and peg-tops, hoops and suckers, in their courses mark the
flight of time.

Perhaps attracted by the incongruity, I took this way. In such
a thoroughfare it is remarkable that satisfied as are its public with
transient substitutes for literature, they require permanent types
(the term is so far misused it may hardly be further outraged) of
Art. Pictures, so-called, are the sole departure from necessity and
popular finery which the prominent wares display. The window
exhibiting these aspirations was scarcely more inviting than the
fishmonger’s next door, but less odoriferous, and I stopped to see
what the ill-reflecting lights would show. There was a typical
selection. Prominently, a large chromo of a girl at prayer. Her
eyes turned upwards, presumably to heaven, left the gazer in no
state to dwell on the elaborately bared breasts below. These
might rival, does wax-work attempt such beauties, any similar
attraction of Marylebone’s extensive show. This personification
of pseudo-purity was sensually diverting, and consequently market-
able.

My mind seized the ideal of such a picture, and turned from this
prostitution of it sickly away. Hurriedly I proceeded, and did
not stop again until I had passed the low gateway of the place I
sought.

Its forbidding exterior was hidden in the deep twilight and

                                                invited

invited no consideration. I entered and swung back the inner
door. It was papered with memorial cards, recommending to
mercy the unprotesting spirits of the dead. My prayers were re-
quested for the ” repose of the soul of the Architect of that
church, who passed away in the True Faith— December,— 1887.”
Accepting the assertion, I counted him beyond them, and mentally
entrusted mine to the priest for those who were still groping for
it in the gloom.

Within the building, darkness again forbade examination. A
few lamps hanging before the altar struggled with obscurity.

I tried to identify some ugly details with the great man’s com-
placent eccentricity, and failing, turned toward the street again.
Nearly an hour’s walk lay between me and my home. This fact
and the atmosphere of stuffy sanctity about the place, set me
longing for space again, and woke a fine scorn for aught but air
and sky. My appetite, too, was now an hour ahead of opportunity.
I sent back a final glance into the darkness as my hand prepared
to strike the door. There was no motion at the moment, and it
was silent ; but the magnetism of human presence reached me
where I stood. I hesitated, and in a few moments found what
sought me on a chair in the far corner, flung face downwards
across the seat. The attitude arrested me. I went forward. The
lines of the figure spoke unquestionable despair.

Does speech convey intensity of anguish ? Its supreme ex-
pression is in form. Here was human agony set forth in meagre
lines, voiceless, but articulate to the soul. At first the forcible
portrayal of it assailed me with the importunate strength of beauty.
Then the Thing stretched there in the obdurate darkness grew
personal and banished delight. Neither sympathy nor its vulgar
substitute, curiosity, induced my action as I drew near. I was
eager indeed to be gone. I wanted to ignore the almost indis-

                                                tinguishable

tinguishable being. My will cried : Forsake it !— but I found
myself powerless to obey. Perhaps it would have conquered had
not the girl swiftly raised herself in quest of me. I stood still.
Her eyes met mine. A wildly tossed spirit looked from those ill-
lighted windows, beckoning me on. Mine pressed towards it, but
whether my limbs actually moved I do not know, for the
imperious summons robbed me of any consciousness save that of
necessity to comply.

Did she reach me, or was our advance mutual ? It cannot be
told. I suppose we neither know. But we met, and her hand,
grasping mine, imperatively dragged me into the cold and noisy
street.

We went rapidly in and out of the flaring booths, hustling little
staggering children in our unpitying speed, I listening dreamily to
the concert of hoarse yells and haggling whines which struck
against the silence of our flight. On and on she took me,
breathless and without explanation. We said nothing. I had no
care or impulse to ask our goal. The fierce pressure of my hand
was not relaxed a breathing space ; it would have borne me against
resistance could I have offered any, but I was capable of none.
The streets seemed to rush past us, peopled with despair.

Weirdly lighted faces sent blank negations to a spirit of question
which finally began to stir in me. Here, I thought once vaguely,
was the everlasting No !

We must have journeyed thus for more than half an hour and
walked far. I did not detect it. In the eternity of supreme
moments time is not. Thought, too, fears to be obtrusive and
stands aside.

We gained a door at last, down some blind alley out of the
deafening thoroughfare. She threw herself against it and pulled me
up the unlighted stairs. They shook now and then with the

                                                violence

violence of our ascent ; with my free hand I tried to help myself
up by the broad and greasy balustrade. There was little sound in
the house. A light shone under the first door we passed, but all
was quietness within.

At the very top, from the dense blackness of the passage,
my guide thrust me suddenly into a dazzling room. My eyes
rejected its array of brilliant light. On a small chest of drawers
three candles were guttering, two more stood flaring in the high
window ledge, and a lamp upon a table by the bed rendered these
minor illuminations unnecessary by its diffusive glare. There
were even some small Christmas candles dropping coloured grease
down the wooden mantel-piece, and I noticed a fire had been
made, built entirely of wood. There were bits of an inlaid work-
box or desk, and a chair-rung, lying half burnt in the grate. Some
peremptory demand for light had been, these signs denoted
unscrupulously met. A woman lay upon the bed, half clothed,
asleep. As the door slammed behind me the flames wavered and
my companion released my hand. She stood beside me, shuddering
violently, but without utterance.

I looked around. Everywhere proofs of recent energy were
visible. The bright panes reflecting back the low burnt candles,
the wretched but shining furniture, and some odd bits of painted
china, set before the spluttering lights upon the drawers, bore
witness to a provincial intolerance of grime. The boards were
bare, and marks of extreme poverty distinguished the whole room.
The destitution of her surroundings accorded ill with the girl’s
spotless person and well-tended hands, which were hanging
tremulously down.

Subsequently I realised that these deserted beings must have
first fronted the world from a sumptuous stage. The details in
proof of it I need not cite. It must have been so.

                                                My

My previous apathy gave place to an exaggerated observation.
Even some pieces of a torn letter, dropped off the quilt, I noticed,
were of fine texture, and inscribed by a man’s hand. One fragment
bore an elaborate device in colours. It may have been a club crest
or coat-of-arms. I was trying to decide which, when the girl at
length gave a cry of exhaustion or relief, at the same time falling
into a similar attitude to that she had taken in the dim church.
Her entire frame became shaken with tearless agony or terror. It
was sickening to watch. She began partly to call or moan,
begging me, since I was beside her, wildly, and then with heart-
breaking weariness, ” to stop, to stay.” She half rose and claimed
me with distracted grace. All her movements were noticeably
fine.

I pass no judgment on her features ; suffering for the time
assumed them, and they made no insistence of individual claim.

I tried to raise her, and kneeling, pulled her reluctantly towards
me. The proximity was distasteful. An alien presence has ever
repelled me. I should have pitied the girl keenly perhaps a few
more feet away. She clung to me with ebbing force. Her heart
throbbed painfully close to mine, and when I meet now in the
dark streets others who have been robbed, as she has been, of their
great possession, I have to remember that.

The magnetism of our meeting was already passing ; and, reason
asserting itself, I reviewed the incident dispassionately, as she lay
like a broken piece of mechanism in my arms. Her dark hair
had come unfastened and fell about my shoulder. A faint white
streak of it stole through the brown. A gleam of moonlight
strays thus through a dusky room. I remember noticing, as it
was swept with her involuntary motions across my face, a faint
fragrance which kept recurring like a subtle and seductive sprite,
hiding itself with fairy cunning in the tangled maze.

                                                The

The poor girl’s mind was clearly travelling a devious way.
Broken and incoherent exclamations told of a recently wrung
promise, made to whom, or of what nature, it was not my business
to conjecture or inquire.

I record the passage of a few minutes. At the first opportunity
I sought the slumberer on the bed. She slept well : hers was
a long rest ; there might be no awakening from it, for she was
dead. Schooled in one short hour to all surprises, the knowledge
made me simply richer by a fact. Nothing about the sternly
set face invited horror. It had been, and was yet, a strong
and, if beauty be not confined to youth and colour, a beautiful
face.

Perhaps this quiet sharer of the convulsively broken silence was
thirty years old. Death had set a firmness about the finely con-
trolled features that might have shown her younger. The actual
years are of little matter ; existence, as we reckon time, must have
lasted long. It was not death, but life that had planted the look
of disillusion there. And romance being over, all good-byes to
youth are said. By the bedside, on a roughly constructed table,
was a dearly bought bunch of violets. They were set in a blue
bordered tea-cup, and hung over in wistful challenge of their own
diviner hue. They were foreign, and their scent probably
unnatural, but it stole very sweetly round the room. A book lay
face downwards beside them alas for parochial energies, not of
a religious type— and the torn fragments of the destroyed letter
had fallen on the black binding.

A passionate movement of the girl’s breast against mine directed
my glance elsewhere. She was shivering, and her arms about my
neck were stiffly cold. The possibility that she was starving
missed my mind. It would have found my heart. I wondered
if she slept, and dared not stir, though I was by this time cramped

                                                and

and chilled. The vehemence of her agitation ended, she breathed
gently, and slipped finally to the floor.

I began to face the need of action and recalled the chances
of the night. When and how I might get home was a necessary
question, and I listened vainly for a friendly step outside. None
since we left it had climbed the last flight of stairs. I could hear
a momentary vibration of men’s voices in the room below. Was
it possible to leave these suddenly discovered children of peace and
tumult ? Was it possible to stay ?

This was Saturday, and two days later I was bound for Scotland ;
a practical recollection of empty trunks was not lost in my survey
of the situation. Then how, if I decided not to forsake the poor
child, now certainly sleeping in my arms, were my anxious friends
to learn my whereabouts, and understand the eccentricity of the
scheme? Indisputably, I determined, something must be done for
the half-frantic wanderer who was pressing a tiring weight against
me. And there should be some kind hand to cover the cold limbs
and close the wide eyes of the breathless sleeper, waiting a comrade’s
sanction to fitting rest.

Conclusion was hastening to impatient thought, when my eyes
let fall a fatal glance upon the dead girl’s face. I do not think it
had changed its first aspect of dignified repose, and yet now it woke
in me a sensation of cold dread. The dark eyes unwillingly open
reached mine in an insistent stare. One hand lying out upon the
coverlid, I could never again mistake for that of temporarily
suspended life. My watch ticked loudly, but I dared not examine
it, nor could I wrench my sight from the figure on the bed. For
the first time the empty shell of being assailed my senses. I
watched feverishly, knowing well the madness of the action, for a
hint of breathing, almost stopping my own.

To-day, as memory summons it, I cannot dwell without

                                                reluctance

reluctance on this hour of my realisation of the thing called
Death.

A hundred fancies, clothed in mad intolerable terrors, possessed
me, and had not my lips refused it outlet, I should have set free a
cry, as the spent child beside me had doubtless longed to do, and
failed, ere, desperate, she fled.

My gaze was chained ; it could not get free. As the shapes of
monsters of ever varying and increasing dreadfulness flit through
one’s dreams, the images of those I loved crept round me, with
stark yet well-known features, their limbs borrowing death’s rigid
outline, as they mocked my recognition of them with soundless
semblances of mirth. They began to wind their arms about me
in fierce embraces of burning and supernatural life. Gradually
the contact froze. They bound me in an icy prison. Their hold
relaxed. These creatures of my heart were restless. The horribly
familiar company began to dance at intervals in and out a ring of
white gigantic bedsteads, set on end like tombstones, each of which
framed a huge and fearful travesty of the sad set face that was all
the while seeking vainly a pitiless stranger’s care. They vanished.
My heart went home. The dear place was desolate. No echo
of its many voices on the threshold or stair. My footsteps made
no sound as I went rapidly up to a well-known room. Here I
besought the mirror for the reassurance of my own reflection. It
denied me human portraiture and threw back cold glare. As I
opened mechanically a treasured book, I noticed the leaves were
blank, not even blurred by spot or line ; and then I shivered— it
was deadly cold. The fire that but an hour or two ago it seemed
I had forsaken for the winter twilight, glowed with slow derision
at my efforts to rekindle heat. My hands plunged savagely into
its red embers, but I drew them out quickly, unscathed and clean.
The things by which I had touched life were nothing. Here, as

The Yellow Book Vol. II. H

                                                I called

I called the dearest names, their echoes came back again with the
sound of an unlearned language. I did not recognise, and yet I
framed them. What was had never been !

My spirit summoned the being who claimed mine. He came,
stretching out arms of deathless welcome. As he reached me my
heart took flight. I called aloud to it, but my cries were lost in
awful laughter that broke to my bewildered fancy from the
hideously familiar shapes which had returned and now encircled
the grand form of him I loved. But I had never known him.
I beat my breast to wake there the wonted pain of tingling joy.
I called past experience with unavailing importunity to bear
witness the man was wildly dear to me. He was not. He left
me with bent head a stranger, whom I would not if I could
recall.

For one brief second, reason found me. I struggled to shake
off the phantoms of despair. I tried to grasp while it yet lingered
the teaching of this never-to-be-forgotten front of death. The
homeless house with its indefensible bow window stood out from
beneath the prison walls again. What had this to do with it ?
I questioned. And the answer it had evoked replied, ” Not
the desolation of something lost, but of something that had never
been.”

The half-clad girl of the wretched picture-shop came into view
with waxen hands and senseless symbolism. I had grown calmer,
but her doll-like lips hissed out the same half-meaningless but
pregnant words. Then the nights of a short life when I could
pray, years back in magical childhood, sought me. They found me
past them— without the power

Truly the body had been for me the manifestation of the thing
called soul. Here was my embodiment bereft. My face was
stiff with drying tears. Sickly I longed to beg of an unknown God

                                                a miracle.

a miracle. Would He but touch the passive body and breathe into
it the breath even of transitory life.

I craved but a fleeting proof of its ever possible existence. For
to me it was not, would never be, and had never been.

The partially relinquished horror was renewing dominance.
Speech of any incoherence or futility would have brought mental
power of resistance. My mind was fast losing landmarks amid the
continued quiet of the living and the awful stillness of the dead.
There was no sound, even of savage guidance, I should not then
have welcomed with glad response.

“The realm of Silence,” says one of the world’s great teachers,
” is large enough beyond the grave.”

I seemed to have passed life’s portal, and my soul’s small strength
was beating back the noiseless gate. In my extremity, I cried,
” O God ! for man’s most bloody warshout, or Thy whisper ! ”
It was useless. Not one dweller in the crowded tenements broke
his slumber or relaxed his labour in answer to the involuntary
prayer.

And may the ‘Day of Account of Words’ take note of this !
Then, says the old fable, shall the soul of the departed be weighed
against an image of Truth. I tried to construct in imagination
the form of the dumb deity who should bear down the balances
for me. Soundlessness was turning fear to madness. I could
neither quit nor longer bear company the grim Presence in that
room. But the supreme moment was very near.

Long since, the four low candles had burned out, and now the
lamp was struggling fitfully to keep alight. The flame could last
but a few moments. I saw it, and did not face the possibility or
darkness. The sleeping girl, I concluded rapidly, had used all
available weapons of defiant light.

As yet, since my entrance, I had hardly stirred, steadily support-

                                                ing

ing the burden on my breast. Now, without remembrance of it,
I started up to escape. The violent suddenness of the action woke
my companion. She staggered blindly to her feet and confronted
me as I gained the door.

Scarcely able to stand, and dashing the dimness from her eyes,
she clutched a corner of the drawers behind her for support.
Her head thrown back, and her dark hair hanging round it,
crowned a grandly tragic form. This was no poor pleader, and I
was unarmed for fight. She seized my throbbing arm and cried
in a whisper, low and hoarse, but strongly audible :

” For God’s sake, stay here with me.”

My lips moved vainly. I shook my head.

” For God in heaven’s sake “— she repeated, swaying, and
turning her burning, reddened eyes on mine —”don’t leave me
now.”

I stood irresolute, half stunned. Stepping back, she stooped
and began piecing together the dismembered letter on the bed.
A mute protest arrested her from a cold sister’s face. She
swept the action from her, crying, ” No ! ” and bending forward
suddenly, gripped me with fierce force.

” Here ! Here ! ” she prayed, dragging me passionately back
into the room.

The piteous need and wild entreaty— no, the vision of dire
anguish —was breaking my purpose of flight. A fragrance that
was to haunt me stole between us. The poor little violets put
in their plea. I moved to stay. Then a smile— the splendour
of it may never be reached again— touched her pale lips and broke
through them, transforming, with divine radiance, her young
and blurred and never-to-be-forgotten face. It wavered, or was
it the last uncertain flicker of the lamp that made me fancy it ?
The exquisite moment was barely over when darkness came.

                                                Then

Then light indeed forsook me. Almost ignorant of my own
intention, I resisted the now trembling figure, indistinguishable
in the gloom, but it still clung. I thrust it off me with un-
natural vigour.

She fell heavily to the ground. Without a pause of thought I
stumbled down the horrible unlighted stairs. A few steps before
I reached the bottom my foot struck a splint off the thin edge of
one of the rotten treads. I slipped, and heard a door above open
and then shut. No other sound. At length I was at the door.
It was ajar. I opened it and looked out. Since I passed through
it first the place had become quite deserted. The inhabitants
were, I suppose, all occupied elsewhere at such an hour on their
holiday night. The lamps, if there were any, had not been lit.
The outlook was dense blackness. Here too the hideous dark
pursued me and silence held its sway. Even the children were
screaming in more enticing haunts of gaudy squalor. Some,
whose good angels perhaps had not forgotten them, had put
themselves to sleep. Not many hours ago their shrieks were
deafening. Were these too in conspiracy against me ? I
remembered vaguely hustling some of them with unmeant harsh-
ness in my hurried progress from the Church. Dumb the whole
place seemed ; and it was, but for the dim stars aloft, quite dark.
I dared not venture across the threshold, bound by pitiable
cowardice to the spot. Alas for the unconscious girl upstairs.
A murmur from within the house might have sent me back to
her. Certainly it would have sent me, rather than forth into the
empty street. The faintest indication of humanity had recalled
me. I waited the summons of a sound. It came.

But from the deserted, yet not so shamefully deserted, street.
A man staggering home by aid of friendly railings, set up a
drunken song. At the first note I rushed towards him, pushing

                                                past

past him in wild departure, and on till I reached the noisome and
flaring thoroughfare, a haven where sweet safety smiled. Here I
breathed joy, and sped away without memory of the two lifeless
beings lying alone in that shrouded chamber of desolation, and
with no instinct to return.

My sole impulse was flight ; and the way, unmarked in the
earlier evening, was unknown. It took me some minutes to find
a cab ; but the incongruous vehicle, rudely dispersing the hag-
gling traders in the roadway, came at last, and carried me from
the distorted crowd of faces and the claims of pity to peace.

I lay back shivering, and the wind crept through the rattling
glass in front of me. I did not note the incalculable turnings that
took me home.

My account of the night’s adventure was abridged and un-
sensational. I was pressed neither for detail nor comment, but
accorded a somewhat humorous welcome which bade me say
farewell to dying horror, and even let me mount boldly to the
once death-haunted room.

Upon its threshold I stood and looked in, half believing possible
the greeting pictured there under the dead girl’s influence, and I
could not enter. Again I fled, this time to kindly light, and
heard my brothers laughing noisily with a friend in the bright hall.

A waltz struck up in the room above as I reached them. I
joined the impromptu dance, and whirled the remainder of that
evening gladly away.

Physically wearied, I slept. My slumber had no break in it.
I woke only to the exquisite joys of morning, and lay watching
the early shadows creep into the room. Presently the sun rose.
His first smile greeted me from the glass before my bed. I
sprang up disdainful of that majestic reflection, and flung the
window wide to meet him face to face. His splendour fell too on

                                                one

one who had trusted me, but I forgot it. Not many days later
the same sunlight that turned my life to laughter shone on the
saddest scene of mortalending, and, for one I had forsaken, lit the
ways of death. I never dreamed it might. For the next morn-
ing the tragedy of the past night was a distant one, no longer in-
tolerable.

At twelve o’clock, conscience suggested a search. I acquiesced,
but did not move. At half-past, it insisted on one, and I obeyed.
I set forth with a determination of success and no clue to promise
it. At four o’clock, I admitted the task hopeless and abandoned
it. Duty could ask no more of me, I decided, not wholly dis-
satisfied that failure forbade more difficult demands. As I passed
it on my way home, some dramatic instinct impelled me to re-
enter the unsightly church.

I must almost have expected to see the same prostrate figure,
for my eyes instantly sought the corner it had occupied. The
winter twilight showed it empty. A service was about to begin.
One little lad in violet skirt and goffered linen was struggling to
light the benediction tapers, and a troop of school children pushed
past me as I stood facing the altar and blocking their way. A
grey-clad sister of mercy was arresting each tiny figure, bidding it
pause beside me, and with two firm hands on either shoulder,
compelling a ludicrous curtsey, and at the same time whispering
the injunction to each hurried little personage, —”always make a
reverence to the altar.” ” Ada, come back ! ” and behold another
unwilling bob ! Perhaps the good woman saw her Master’s face
behind the tinsel trappings and flaring lights. But she forgot His
words. The saying to these little ones that has rung through
centuries commanded liberty and not allegiance. I stood aside
till they had shuffled into seats, and finally kneeling stayed till the
brief spectacle of the afternoon was over.

                                                Towards

Towards its close I looked away from the mumbling priest,
whose attention, divided between inconvenient millinery and the
holiest mysteries, was distracting mine.

Two girls holding each other’s hands came in and stood in
deep shadow behind the farthest rows of high-backed chairs by the
door. The younger rolled her head from side to side ; her shift-
ing eyes and ceaseless imbecile grimaces chilled my blood. The
other, who stood praying, turned suddenly (the place but for the
flaring altar lights was dark) and kissed the dreadful creature by
her side. I shuddered, and yet her face wore no look of loath-
ing nor of pity. The expression was a divine one of habitual
love.

She wiped the idiot’s lips and stroked the shaking hand in hers,
to quiet the sad hysterical caresses she would not check. It was a
page of gospel which the old man with his back to it might never
read. A sublime and ghastly scene.

Up in the little gallery the grey-habited nuns were singing a
long Latin hymn of many verses, with the refrain ” Oh ! Sacred
Heart ! ” I buried my face till the last vibrating chord of the
accompaniment was struck. The organist ventured a plagal
cadence. It evoked no “amen.” I whispered one, and an acci-
dentally touched note shrieked disapproval. I repeated it. Then
I spit upon the bloodless cheek of duty, and renewed my quest.
This time it was for the satisfaction of my own tingling soul.

I retook my unknown way. The streets were almost empty
and thinly strewn with snow. It was still falling. I shrank from
marring the spotless page that seemed outspread to challenge and
exhibit the defiling print of man. The quiet of the muffled
streets soothed me. The neighbourhood seemed lulled into un-
wonted rest.

Black little figures lurched out of the white alleys in twos and

                                                threes

threes. But their childish utterances sounded less shrill than
usual, and sooner died away.

Now in desperate earnest I spared neither myself nor the incre-
dulous and dishevelled people whose aid I sought.

Fate deals honestly with all. She will not compromise though
she may delay. Hunger and weariness at length sent me home,
with an assortment of embellished negatives ringing in my failing
ears.

I had almost forgotten my strange experience, when, some months
afterwards, in late spring, the wraith of that winter meeting appeared
to me. It was past six o’clock, and I had reached, ignorant of the
ill-chosen hour, a notorious thoroughfare in the western part of this
glorious and guilty city. The place presented to my unfamiliar
eyes a remarkable sight. Brilliantly lit windows, exhibiting dazz-
ling wares, threw into prominence the human mart.

This was thronged. I pressed into the crowd. Its steady and
opposite progress neither repelled nor sanctioned my admittance.
However, I had determined on a purchase, and was not to
be baulked by the unforeseen. I made it, and stood for a moment
at the shop-door preparing to break again through the rapidly
thickening throng.

Up and down, decked in frigid allurement, paced the insatiate
daughters of an everlasting king. What fair messengers, with
streaming eyes and impotently craving arms, did they send afar off
ere they thus ” increased their perfumes and debased themselves
even unto hell ” ? This was my question. I asked not who
forsook them, speaking in farewell the “hideous English of their
fate.”

I watched coldly, yet not inapprehensive or a certain grandeur
in the scene. It was Virtue’s very splendid Dance of Death.

                                                A sickening

A sickening confusion of odours assailed my senses; each
essence a vile enticement, outraging Nature by a perversion of her
own pure spell.

A timidly protesting fragrance stole strangely by. I started at
its approach. It summoned a stinging memory. I stepped for-
ward to escape it, but stopped, confronted by the being who had
shared, by the flickering lamp-light and in the presence of that
silent witness, the poor little violet’s prayer.

The man beside her was decorated with a bunch of sister
flowers to those which had taken part against him, months ago, in
vain. He could have borne no better badge of victory. He was
looking at some extravagant trifle in the window next the entry I
had just crossed. They spoke, comparing it with a silver case he
turned over in his hand. In the centre I noticed a tiny enamelled
shield. The detail seemed familiar, but beyond identity. They
entered the shop. I stood motionless, challenging memory, till it
produced from some dim corner of my brain a hoarded ” No.”

The device now headed a poor strip of paper on a dead girl’s
bed. I saw a figure set by death, facing starvation, and with ruin
in torn fragments in her hand. But what place in the scene had
I ? A brief discussion next me made swift answer.

They were once more beside me. The man was speaking :
his companion raised her face ; I recognised its outline,— its true
aspect I shall not know. Four months since it wore the mask
of sorrow ; it was now but one of the pages of man’s immortal
book. I was conscious of the matchless motions which in the
dim church had first attracted me.

She was clothed, save for a large scarf of vehemently brilliant
crimson, entirely in dull vermilion. The two shades might serve
as symbols of divine and earthly passion. Yet does one ask the
martyr’s colour, you name it ‘Red’ (and briefly thus her gar-

                                                ment) :

ment) : no distinctive hue. The murderer and the prelate too
may wear such robes of office. Both are empowered to bless and
ban.

My mood was reckless. I held my hands out, craving mercy.
It was my bitter lot to beg. My warring nature became unani-
mously suppliant, heedless of the debt this soul might owe me
—of the throes to which I left it, and of the discreditable marks
of mine it bore. Failure to exact regard I did not entertain.
I waited, with exhaustless fortitude, the response to my appeal.
Whence it came I know not. The man and woman met my
gaze with a void incorporate stare. The two faces were merged
into one avenging visage— so it seemed. I was excited. As
they turned towards the carriage waiting them, I heard a laugh,
mounting to a cry. It rang me to an outraged Temple.
Sabbath bells peal sweeter calls, as once this might have done.

I knew my part then in the despoiled body, with its soul’s
tapers long blown out.

Wheels hastened to assail that sound, but it clanged on.
Did it proceed from some defeated angel ? or the woman’s
mouth ? or mine ? God knows !