, yet there was
something still girlish in the pose of her black-clad figure which
seemed to suggest a shorter tale of years. Raven dark hair, lustreless
and dull, framed a pale, emaciated face from which ill-health had
stripped almost all that had once been beautiful. Only the immense dark
eyes, feverishly bright beneath the sunken temples, and the still lovely
line from jaw to pointed chin, remained unmarred, their beauty mocked
by the pinched nostrils and drawn mouth, and by the scraggy, almost
fleshless throat.

It might have been the face of a dead woman, so still, so waxen was
it, were it not for the eager brilliance of the eyes. In them, fixed
watchfully upon the closed door, was concentrated the whole vitality of
the failing body.

Beyond that door, flight upon flight of some steps dropped seemingly
endlessly one below the other, leading at last to a cement-floored
vestibule, cheerless and uninviting, which opened on to the street.

Perhaps there was no particular reason why the vestibule should have
been other than it was, seeing that Wallater's Buildings had not been
designed for the habitual loiterer. For such as he there remains always
the "luxurious entrance-hall" of hotel advertisement.

As far as the inhabitants of "Wallater's" were concerned, they clattered
over the cement flooring of the vestibule in the mornings, on their way
to work, without pausing to cast an eye of criticism upon its general
aspect of uncomeliness, and dragged tired feet across it in an evening
with no other thought but that of how many weary steps there were to
climb before the room which served as "home" should be attained.

But to the well-dressed, middle-aged man who now paused, half in doubt,
on the threshold of the Buildings, the sordid-looking vestibule,
with its bare floor and drab-coloured walls, presented an epitome of
desolation.

His keen blue eyes, in one of which was stuck a monocle attached to a
broad black ribbon, rested appraisingly upon the ascending spiral of
the stone stairway that vanished into the gloomy upper reaches of the
Building.

Against this chill background there suddenly took shape in his mind the
picture of a spacious room, fragrant with the scent of roses--a room
full of mellow tints of brown and gold, athwart which the afternoon
sunlight lingered tenderly, picking out here the limpid blue of a bit of
old Chinese "blue-and-white," there the warm gleam of polished copper,
or here again the bi