I turned my eyes in the direction in which my aunt was looking, but the crowd before me prevented my seeing the singer. 'She is gone, vanished,' said my aunt sharply, for my eagerness to see made me rude. 'What was she like?' I asked. 'She was a young slender girl, holding out a bunch of small fancy baskets of woven colours, through which the rain was dripping. She was dressed in rags, and through the rags shone, here and there, patches of her shoulders; and she wore a dingy red handkerchief round her head. She stood in the wet and mud, beneath the lamp, quite unconscious apparently of the bustle and confusion around her.' Almost at the same moment our carriage drew up. I lingered on the step as long as possible. My mother made a sign of impatience at the delay, and I got into the carriage. Spite of the rain, I put down the window and leaned out. I forgot the presence of my mother and aunt. I forgot everything. The carriage moved on. 'Winifred!' I gasped, as the certainty that the voice was hers came upon me. And the dingy London night became illuminated with scrolls of fire, whose blinding, blasting scripture seared my eyes till I was fain to close them: 'Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread: let them seek it also out of desolate places.' So rapidly had the carriage rolled through the rain, and so entirely had my long pain robbed me of all presence of mind, that, by the time I had recovered from the paralysing shock, we had reached Piccadilly Circus. I pulled the check-string. 'Why, Henry!' said my mother, who had raised the window, 'what are you doing? And what has made you turn so pale?' My aunt sat in indignant silence. 'Ten thousand pardons,' I said, as I stepped out of the carriage, and shook hands with them. 'A sudden recollection--important papers unsecured at my hotel--business in--in Lincoln's Inn Fields. I will call on you in the morning.' And I reeled down the pavement towards the Haymarket. When I was some little distance from the carriage, I took to my heels and hurried as fast as possible towards the theatre, utterly regardless of the people. I reached the spot breathless. I stood for a moment staring wildly to right and left of me. Not a trace of her was to be seen. I heard a thin voice from my lips, that did not seem my own, ask a policeman, who was now patrolling the neighbourhood, if he had seen a basket-girl singing. 'No,' said the man, 'but I fancy you mean the Essex Street Beauty, don't you? I haven't seen her for a long while now, but her dodge used to be to come here on rainy nights, and stand bare-headed and sing and sell just when the theatres was a-bustin'. She gets a good lot, I fancy, by that dodge.' 'The Essex Street Beauty?'