attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a
particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the
lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this
sordid wilderness of décolleté art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen,
dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick layers of
powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore,
constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently
unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance
excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the
solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left
untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the
announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying
no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory
interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl.

When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song
were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured
ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant.
When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner
changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt
attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and
tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a
strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable
faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her
spell.

Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of
which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust
preys on creatures marked for its spoil.