e had
seen her, his quick sensitiveness had noted the growth from girl to
woman. She was large, full-bosomed, wide-browed, clear-eyed. She had
not worried him about other girls. She had reproved him for confessed
follies in just the way that man loves to be reproved. She had mildly
soared with him into the empyrean of his dreams. She had enjoyed
whole-heartedly, from the back row of the dress-circle, the play to
which he had taken her--as a member of the profession he had, in Jane's
eyes, princely privileges--and on the top of the Cricklewood omnibus
she had eaten, with the laughter and gusto of her twenty years, the
exotic sandwiches he had bought at the delicatessen shop in Leicester
Square. She was the ideal sister.

And now she was gone, like a snow-flake on a river. For a long while it
seemed absurd, incredible. He went on all sorts of preposterous
adventures to find her. He walked through the city day after day at the
hours when girls and men pour out of their honeycombs of offices into
the streets. She had never told him where she was employed, thinking
the matter of little interest; and he, in his careless way, had never
inquired. Once he had suggested calling for her at her office, and she
had abruptly vetoed the suggestion. Paul was too remarkable a young man
to escape the notice of her associates; her feelings towards him were
too fine to be scratched by jocular allusion. After a time, having
failed to meet her in the human torrents of Cheapside and Cannon
Street, Paul gave up the search. Jane was lost, absolutely lost--and,
with her, Barney Bill. He went on tour again, heavy-hearted. He felt
that, in losing these two, he had committed an act of base ingratitude.

He had been four years on the stage and had grown from youth into
manhood. But one day at three-and-twenty he found himself as poor in
pence, though as rich in dreams, as at thirteen.

Necessity had compelled him to take what he could get. This time it was
a leading part; but a leading part in a crude melodrama in a fit-up
company. They had played in halls and concert rooms, on pier pavilions,
in wretched little towns. It was glorious July Weather and business was
bad--so bad that the manager abruptly closed the treasury and
disappeared, leaving the company stranded a hundred and fifty miles
from London, with a couple of weeks' salary unpaid.

Paul was packing his clothes in the portmanteau that lay on the narrow
bed in his tiny back bedroom, wa