d, I said, 'But,--but was she begging,
Wilderspin? Not literally begging! My Winnie! my poor Winnie!'

My mother looked at me. The gaze was full of a painful interest; but
she recognised that between me and her there now was rolling an
infinite sea or emotion, and her eyes drooped before mine as though
she had suddenly invaded the privacy of a stranger.

'She was offering matches for sale,' said Wilderspin.

'Winnie! Winnie! Winnie!' I murmured. 'Did she seem emaciated,
Wilderspin? Did she seem as though she wanted food?'

'Heaven, no!' exclaimed my mother.

'No,' replied Wilderspin firmly. 'On that point who is a better judge
than the painter of "Faith and Love"? She did not want food. The
colour of the skin was not--was not--such as I have seen--when a
woman is dying for want of food.'

'God bless you, Wilderspin, God bless you! But what then?--what
followed?'

'Well, Mr. Aylwin, I stood for some time gazing at her, muttering
thanks to my mother for what I had found. I then went up to her, and
asked her for a box of matches. She held me out a box, mechanically,
as it seemed, and, when I had taken it of her, she held out her hand
just as though she had been a real earthly beggar-girl; but that was
part of the beneficent illusion of Heaven.'

'That was for the price, don't you know?' said Sleaford. 'What did
you give her?'

'I gave her a shilling, my lord, which she looked at for some time in
a state of bewilderment. She then began to feel about her as if for
something.'

'She was feelin' for the change, don't you know?' said Sleaford, not
in the least degree perceiving how these interruptions of a prosaic
mind were maddening me.

'I told her that I wanted to speak to her,' continued Wilderspin,
'and asked her where she lived. She gave me the same bewildered,
other-world look with which she had regarded the shilling, a look
which seemed to say, "Go away now: leave me alone!" As I did not go,
she began to appear afraid of me, and moved away towards Temple Bar,
and then crossed the street. I followed, as far behind as I could
without running the danger of losing sight of her, to a wretched
place running out of Great Queen Street. Holborn, which I afterwards
found was called Primrose Court, and when I got there she had
disappeared in one of the squalid houses opening into the court. I
knocked at the first door once or twice before an answer came, and
then a tiny girl with the face of a woman opened it. "Is t