matches, and all the other stray unfortunates of the neighbourhood. _Well_, there it was; and a bold course always the best! The bold course--which was it? To go to the police? To his wife? To that girl, and find out if she were in this ramp? To wait till six o’clock, meet the ruffian and shake the teeth out of him? Granter could not decide. All seemed equally bold--would do equally well. And a fifth course presented itself which seemed even bolder: Ignore the thing! The tide had just turned, and the full waters below him were very still, of a sunlit soft grey colour. This stillness of the river restored to Charles Granter something of the impersonal mood in which he had crossed the Embankment to look at it. Here, by the mother stream of this great town, was he, tall, strong, well-fed, and, if not rich, quite comfortable; and here, too, were hundreds of thousands like that needy flower-girl and this shadowy scoundrel skating on the edge of destitution. And here was this water--to him a source of æsthetic enjoyment; to them--a possible last refuge. The girl had talked of it--beggar’s patter, perhaps, like the blackmailer’s words: “I’m desperate--I’m down and out.” One wanted to be just! If he had known all about them--but he knew nothing! ‘Can’t believe she’s such an ungrateful little wretch!’ he thought; ‘I’ll go back and see her.’ He retraced his way up Oakley Street to the mews which she inhabited, and ascended a stairway scented with petrol. Through the open doorway he could see her baby, of doubtful authorship, seated in an empty flower-basket--a yellow baby, who stared up at him with the placidity of one recently fed. That stare seemed to Granter to be saying: ‘You look out that you’re not taken for my author. Have you got an alibi, old man?’ And almost unconsciously he began to calculate where he had been about fourteen or fifteen months ago. Not in London--thank goodness! In Brittany with his wife--all that July, August, and September. Jingling his money, he contemplated the baby. It seemed more, but it _might_ be only four months old! The baby opened a toothless mouth, “Ga” it said, and stretched out a tiny hand. Granter ceased to jingle the coins and gazed round the room. The first time he came, a month ago, to test her street-corner story, its condition had been deplorable. His theory that people were never better than their environments had prompted the second visit, and that of this afternoon. He had wanted to know that he was not throwing away his money. And there certainly was some appearance of comfort now in a room so small that he and the baby and a bed almost filled it. But he felt a fool for ever having come there even with those best intentions which were the devil. And, turning to go, he saw the girl herself ascending the stairs, a paper bag in her hand, an evident bull’s-eye in her mouth, for a scent of peppermint preceded her. Surely her cheekbones were