He had looked at her for that moment during which she had stood motionless, with her face outlined against the dark shutter, with a strangely mingled feeling that her face was wonderfully unlike any with which he was acquainted; and yet that he had actually seen it before--seen it, and experienced the same half-startled, half-wondering sensation. It was white now to the very lips, and the great, brown eyes, dark and liquid, looked out from under their soft lashes and level eyebrows, wide with terror and distress. Her features were beautifully formed, though they were so thin and worn that it would never have occurred to Julian to class her among the ranks of pretty girls. But the real charm of her face lay about her mouth. It was very strong--though the strength was latent and entirely unconscious; very simple, and very sweet; and even the pallor of her lips and the slight trembling about them could not detract from the beauty of the line they made. Her hair, as Julian noticed, was of a soft black and very luxuriant. She was rather tall, and her shabby jacket concealed and spoilt the outline of her figure; but the set of her well-shaped head was full of instinctive grace. She paused a moment before she answered him, looking into his face with a simple directness which had a dignity of its own. “Yes, sir,” she said in a low voice, which shook a little in spite of her evident efforts to steady it; “to the Hammersmith Road.” “But you’re not going to walk, are you?” said Julian. Apparently her glance at his face had satisfied her. She answered him this time without hesitation. “Yes, sir,” she said. Her voice was very musical and refined. It harmonised better with her face than with her worn, work-girl’s dress, and the dignified deference of her manner. “Then you must let me see you safely part of the way, at any rate,” said Julian impulsively. She hesitated, and looked at him again, and this time the large eyes grew moist with tears. “It’s very silly of me,” she said tremulously. “I--I think it was his touching me that upset me so.” She had been rubbing one hand, all this time, mechanically and involuntarily, as it seemed, over the hand on which that drunken touch had fallen. “I did try to get a ’bus, but they were all full. I couldn’t let you take such trouble.” It needed only the unconscious gratitude of those words to convince Julian that it would be no trouble whatever. And he asserted the same with an assumption of authority and masterfulness quite new to him. It was an hour and a half later when his mother, sitting up, wakeful, in her own room, caught the slight sound made by his latch-key in the door, and noticed a moment’s pause before the door was opened. In that pause there had come to Julian one of those sudden flashes of light which sometimes illuminate a vainly-pondered question.