It was with this feeling strong in his mind that he had walked along the streets the day of the accident to the little schoolgirl. It had been just his luck to meet with a true Perugino face. Little processions of school-children are the commonest things in the world, but you might have passed a hundred of them before you came upon anything like the soft Umbrian glow of that complexion, that tender roundness of the soft form, the devout, sweet eyes. The incident itself, it was true, was something of a break upon the general felicity; but Oswald was able to hope that the little girl whom he had carried with the utmost care and kindness to the hospital, with a sympathetic pallor on his handsome face, would turn out to be not so much hurt, or at least would mend rapidly and be none the worse. He felt very sorry for the poor little thing, yet felt there was a certain luck in the accident, for otherwise he could only have looked at the Perugino, not spoken to her as he did now. He found out the name of the house to which she belonged, and asked permission of the Sister who had been in charge of the procession to go and inquire for the little sufferer. ‘Alas, I am afraid for a long time inquiries must be made at the hospital,’ she said, but gave him her name, Sister Mary Jane, with natural pleasure in the kindness of so handsome a young man, and one who looked so _comme il faut_, so thoroughly a gentleman. It is just as good in an ugly and common person to be kind, but somehow nobody thinks so, and Oswald’s anxiety to hear of the child’s progress seemed exceptional virtue in the mind even of the good Sister. ‘Never say the upper classes are indifferent to other people’s welfare,’ said Sister Mary Jane. ‘I don’t believe a working man could have shown half so much feeling.’ And young Agnes, the teacher, said nothing against this, but admired secretly and wondered why he had looked at her so, and whether by any chance they might ever meet again. Oswald, for his part, went away from the hospital with his head full of that new ‘poem’ which he had begun on the spot even before the _rapprochement_ of the accident-- From old Pietro’s canvas freshly sprung, Fair face!---- That was all the length he got; he discarded the other line and a half which I have already recorded, and went about all day saying over that ‘fair face!’ to himself. It made a suggestive break in the verse which was delightful to him, and gave him a point of pleasure the more--pleasure, and piquant suggestion of other sweetness to come.