and slapping my face. Then she slithered across the room, fell up
the stair into the passage, and disappeared into the caverns of gloom
beyond the door. When she had gone, some one said, "Daddy--Luba's gone!"

Daddy leaped from the form, snarled something inarticulate, fell up the
same stair, and went babbling and yelling after Luba. Some one came and
shoved a fuzzy head through the door, asking lazily, "Whassup?" "Luba's
gone." "Oh!"

I wondered vaguely if it was a nightmare; if I had gone mad; or if other
people had gone mad. I don't know now what it all meant. I only know
that the girl was the Crown's principal witness in a now notorious
murder case. My ear still burns.

A CHARITABLE NIGHT

EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH

_POOR_

_From jail he sought her, and he found
A darkened house, a darkened street,
A shrilly sky that screamed of sleet,
And from The Lane quick gusts of sound._

_He mocked at life that men call sweet.
He went and wiped it out in beer--
"Well, dammit, why should I stick here,
By a dark house in a dark street?"_

_For he and his but serve defeat;
For kings they gather gems and gold,
And life for them, when all is told,
Is a dark house in a dark street._

A CHARITABLE NIGHT

EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH

Charity ... the most nauseous of the virtues, the practice of which
degrades both giver and receiver. The practice of Charity brings you
into the limelight; it elevates you to friendship with the Almighty; you
feel that you are a colleague of the Saviour. It springs from Pity, the
most unclean of all human emotions. It is not akin to love; it is akin
to contempt. To be pitied is to be in the last stages of spiritual
degradation. You cannot pity anything on your own level, for Pity
implies an assumption of superiority. You cannot be pitied by your
friends and equals, only by your self-elected superiors. Let us see Pity
at work in London....

As I lounged some miles east of Aldgate Pump, an old song of love and
lovers and human kindliness was softly ringing in my head, and it still
haunted me as I slid like a phantom into that low-lit causeway that
slinks from a crashing road to the dark wastes of waters beyond. At the
far end a brutal black building broke the sky-line. A few windows were
thinly lit by gas. I climbed the stone steps, hollowed by many feet, and
stood in the entrance-hall.

Then, as it