"Nothing pleases you so much as to be allowed to talk nonsense about
yourself."

Mike laughed.

"Let me have those opera-glasses. That woman sitting on the bench is
like her."

The trees of the embankment waved along the laughing water, and in
scores the sparrows flitted across the sleek green sward. The porter
in his bright uniform, cocked hat, and brass buttons, explained the
way out to a woman. Her child wore a red sash and stooped to play
with a cat that came along the railings, its tail high in the air.

"They know nothing of Lily Young," Mike said to himself; and knowing
the porter could not interfere, he wondered what he would think if he
knew all. "If she comes nothing can save her, she must and shall be
mine."

Waterloo Bridge stood high above the river, level and lovely. Over
Charing Cross the brightness was full of spires and pinnacles, but
Southwark shore was lost in flat dimness. Then the sun glowed and
Westminster ascended tall and romantic, St. Thomas's and St. John's
floating in pale enchantment, and beneath the haze that heaved and
drifted, revealing coal-barges moored by the Southwark shore, lay a
sheet of gold. The candour of the morning laughed upon the river;
and there came a little steamer into the dazzling water, her smoke
heeling over, coiling and uncoiling like a snake, and casting
tremendous shadow--in her train a line of boats laden to the edge
with deal planks. Then the haze heaved and London disappeared, became