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