At the truth flashing in upon me through these fantastic lies, I had passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate's awards can draw from the victim no loud lamentations--when there are no frantic blows aimed at the sufferer's own poor eyeballs till the beard--like the self-mutilated Theban king's--is bedewed with a dark hail-shower of blood. More terrible because more inhuman than the agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition of the soul into which I had passed--when the cruelty that seems to work at Nature's heart, and to vitalise a dark universe of pain, loses its mysterious aspect and becomes a mockery; when the whole vast and merciless scheme seems too monstrous to be confronted save by mad peals of derisive laughter--that dreadful laughter which bubbles lower than the fount of tears--that laughter which is the heart's last language; when no words can give it the relief of utterance--no words, nor wails, nor moans. 'Another quid,' bawled the woman after me, as I turned away, 'another quid, an' then I'll tell you somethink to your awantage. Out with it, and don't spile a good mind.' What I did and said that morning as I wandered through the streets of London in that state of tearless despair and mad unnatural merriment, one hour of which will age a man more than a decade of any woe that can find a voice in lamentations, remains a blank in my memory. I found myself at the corner of Essex Street, staring across the Strand, which, even yet, had scarcely awoke into life. Presently I felt my sleeve pulled, and heard the woman's voice. 'You didn't know as I was cluss behind you all the while, a-watchin' your tantrums. Never spile a good mind, my young swell. Out with t'other quid, an' then I'll tell you somethink about my pootty darter as is on my mind.' I gave her money, but got nothing from her save more incoherent lies and self-contradictions about the time of the funeral. 'Point out the spot where she used to stand and beg. No, don't stand on it yourself, but point it out.' 'This is the werry spot. She used to hold out her matches like this 'ere,--my darter used,--an' say texes out o' the Bible. She loved beggin', pore dear!' 'Texts from the Bible?' I said, staggering under a new thought that seemed to strike through me like a bar of hot metal. 'Can you remember any one of them?' 'It was allus the same tex', an' I ought to remember it well enough, for I've 'eerd it times enough. She wur like you for poll-parritin' ways, and used to say the same thing over an' over ag'in. It wur allus, "Let his children be wagabones and beg their bread; let them seek it also out of desolate places." Why, you're at it ag'in--gurnin' ag'in. You _must_ be drunk.'