ever had one?"

Saxham echoed her half-consciously, revelling in the play of light and
shadow over the delicate face, and the gleaming as of golden dust upon the
outer edges of the waves of red-brown hair drawn carelessly back over the
little ears.

"Not to my knowledge. Of course, I may have had one once." She added, as
he looked at her in suddenly roused surprise, "I must have had one once."
She was looking beyond him at a broad ray of moted white-hot sunshine that
slanted through one of the wide openings above, and cleft the thick
atmosphere of the crowded place like a fiery sword. "I have often wondered
what it really is, and whether I should like it if I heard it? To exchange
Lynette Mildare for Eliza Smith ... that would be horrible. Don't you
think so?"

Saxham smiled. "I think you are joking, and that a young lady who can do
so under the present circumstances deserves to be commended."

She looked at him full.

"I am not joking." Borne by a waft of the sickly air a downy winged seed
came floating towards her, a frail gossamer courier coming from the world
above with tidings that Dame Nature, in spite of all the destruction
wreaked by men, was carrying on her business. "And--I do not even know
that I am a young lady. See there"--she blew a little puff of breath at
the moving messenger, and it wafted away upon a new air-pilgrimage, and,
rising, caught a stronger current, and soared out of sight--"that is me.
It came from somewhere, and it is going somewhere. That is all I know
about myself; perhaps as much as I shall ever know. Why do you look so
glad?"

His lips were sealed. The throb of selfish triumphant exultation came of
the belief that the gulf between them was less wide and deep than he had
thought it. A wastrel may woo and wed a waif, surely, without many
questions being asked. And then, at the clear, innocent questioning of her
eyes, rushed in upon him, scalding, the memories he had thrust away. He
saw the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, his short daily stint of labour done,
settling down to drink himself into hoggish oblivion in his accustomed
corner of the Dutchman's liquor-saloon. He beheld him, his purpose
accomplished, sleeping stertorously, spilled out like the very dregs of
manhood in the sawdust of that foul place; he shuddered as the bloated,
dishevelled thing roused and reeled homewards, trickling at the mouth, as
the clear primrose day peeped over the flat-topped eastern hills. And he
sicken