t firmly, that such conduct
as Margarita displayed on the night in question could have had but one
result--that of filling me, her friend and admirer, with a grieved
displeasure and disgust; that her unwomanly carelessness as to the
feelings of others and her wanton disregard of the wishes and comfort
of those who should have been dearest to her lowered her in my
estimation and greatly detracted from her charm in my eyes. But I am
not writing particularly for the Young Person and candour compels me
to state that she was quite as interesting to me as ever! I didn't
think she had treated Roger very handsomely--true; but Roger had known
that he was marrying a delicious vixen when he married Margarita, you
see, and if I had begun to lecture her, there were too many others who
would have been only too delighted to relieve her of my society. She
abused her power sometimes, I admit it--but then, she had the power!
And oh, the balm she kept for the wounds she gave!

As I have said, I have not the remotest idea of how or why we
confronted Nelson and the Lions, I cannot by any effort of memory see
us arriving or leaving; but I see myself pausing in my lecture on
English history, as a lighted transparency, a straggling crowd and a
band bear down upon us suddenly out of nowhere. It is a poor, vicious
sort of crowd, the gutter-sweepings of London; pale, stunted lads,
haggard, idle slatterns, a handful of women of the street, a trio of
tawdry flower girls. Around the band, which turns out to be only a big
drum and a clattering tambourine, a group of men and women in a
vaguely familiar uniform, the women in ugly coal-scuttle bonnets.

"What is that, Jerry?" says Margarita.

"That is the Salvation Army--let's get along," I answer.

But she will not, for she is curious, and I resign myself to the
inevitable and wait. Their crude appeals are symbols born of a deep
knowledge of the human heart they fight to win--gleaming light and
rhythmic drum: the first groping of savagery, the last pinnacle of the
most highly organised religious spectacle the world has yet
elaborated. They gather near the fountain, they group about their
lighted banner, and a drawling cockney voice afflicts the air. I can
see the circle now--they form in the classic amphitheatre that knows
no century nor country; a humpback pushing a barrow of something
before him stops near us; a woman, coughing frightfully, leans on it,
muttering to herself, staring at Margarita'