Here, and so leaning her bare elbows, I saw on most days of the week a
slim young woman airing herself--a pale-faced, curling-papered,
half-bodiced, unwashed drab of a girl, who would have had shame
written across her for any one to read if she had not seemed of all
women I have ever seen the least shamefaced. Her brows were as
unwritten as a child's, her smile as pure as a seraph's, and her eyes
blue, unfaltering and candid. She laughed a greeting, exchanged
gossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was not
conscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes she
shared her outlook with an old woman--a horrible, greasy go-between,
with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted with
this beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked her
dishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her,
treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges and
leers. She accepted all with good-humour and, really, complete good
breeding. She invited nothing, provoked nothing, but resented nothing.
It seemed to me as if all these things were indeed nothing to her;
that she hardly knew that they were done; as if her soul could render
them at their proper worth, transmute them, sherd them off, discard
them. It was, then, her surface which took them; what her soul
received was a distillation, an essence.

Then one night I had all made plain. She entranced me on a summer
night of stillness, under a full yellow moon. I was working late, till
past ten, past eleven o'clock, and looking out of my open window
suddenly was aware of her at hers. The shutter was down, both wings of
it, and she stood hovering, seen at full length, above the street.
She! Could this be she? It was so indeed--but she was transfigured,
illuminated from within; she rayed forth light. The moon shone full
upon her, and revealed her pure form from head to foot swathed in