'Show her in,' I said."

Here the story was interrupted by a shout of laughter. He laughed a
little himself.

"I should have been polite in any case," he declared, apologetically.
"The clerk ushered in a lady whose extreme embarrassment made me sorry
for her. She changed colour half-a-dozen times in as many seconds, and
then she hurled her errand at my head in these words, without any
previous preparation to break the blow: 'Mr. Lloyd, can you lend me
five shillings?' and before I had recovered she continued--'I came in
by train this morning, and I've lost my purse, and can't get back if
you won't help me--at least I think I've lost my purse. I took it out
to give sixpence to a beggar--and--and here is the sixpence!' and she
held it out to me. She had given her purse to the beggar and carried
the sixpence off in triumph. You may well say 'Oh, Ideala!'"

"And Mr. Lloyd was so very good as to take me to the station, and see
me into the train," Ideala murmured; "and he gave me his bank-book to
amuse me on the journey, and carried Huxley's _Elementary Physiology_,
which I had come in to buy, off in triumph!"

But with all her self-forgetfulness there were moments in which she
showed that she must have thought deeply about herself, weighing her
own individuality against others, to see what place she occupied in her
own age, and how she stood with regard to the ages that had gone
before; yet even this she seemed to have done in a selfless way, having
apparently examined herself coolly, critically, fairly, as she might
have examined any other specimen of humanity in which she felt an
interest, unbiassed by any special regard.