from the depths of her gay wild heart--her sinful, tanned heart--for the
child who fetches her is the fruit of sin, and should have been in bed,
curtained, asleep, instead of hearing in the lamplight her mother's wild
song, where she sits against the Bank, singing not for coppers, with her
dog against her breast.

Home they went. The grey church spires received them; the hoary city,
old, sinful, and majestic. One behind another, round or pointed,
piercing the sky or massing themselves, like sailing ships, like granite
cliffs, spires and offices, wharves and factories crowd the bank;
eternally the pilgrims trudge; barges rest in mid stream heavy laden; as
some believe, the city loves her prostitutes.

But few, it seems, are admitted to that degree. Of all the carriages
that leave the arch of the Opera House, not one turns eastward, and when
the little thief is caught in the empty market-place no one in black-
and-white or rose-coloured evening dress blocks the way by pausing with
a hand upon the carriage door to help or condemn--though Lady Charles,
to do her justice, sighs sadly as she ascends her staircase, takes down
Thomas a Kempis, and does not sleep till her mind has lost itself
tunnelling into the complexity of things. "Why? Why? Why?" she sighs. On
the whole it's best to walk back from the Opera House. Fatigue is the
safest sleeping draught.

The autumn season was in full swing. Tristan was twitching his rug up
under his armpits twice a week; Isolde waved her scarf in miraculous
sympathy with the conductor's baton. In all parts of the house were to
be found pink faces and glittering breasts. When a Royal hand attached
to an invisible body slipped out and withdrew the red and white bouquet
reposing on the scarlet ledge, the Queen of England seemed a name worth