“They shan’t tyke me to the ’orspital, I tell yer—no, nor hanywheres. ’Ome? I daren’t show my fice there! D’ye see my harm an’ my ’ead? Father did that, an’ ’e said ’e’d kill me if I was to come back! Oh, let me alone! Why don’t ye let me alone?” “Get up, Lizzie,” said Muriel, rising briskly to her feet. “Get up at once. I am not going to take you either home or to the hospital. You are coming back with Mary and me to the club, and I shall find a room for you in my lodgings.” “Oh, now, Liz, do come, lovey, do come!” Mary urged. Lizzie rose dizzily to her feet, and between the two they got her back somehow—first to the club, and when they had fed her they took her to a room next Muriel’s. The landlady did not say much. “If the young lydy choose to look hafter the likes o’ ’er, well an’ good, if not she could not stiy, of course.” But the young lady did choose to look after her, and to pay double for the room as well, so there was no more to be said. It was a terrible night. Muriel never forgot it. She sat there holding the girl’s hand and hearing the whole story—the old, old story, told in all its crude, black reality between gasping sobs. “’E said as ’ow I should ’ave my lines,” she groaned; “an’ now ’e says we’d starve. But I shouldn’t care for that, miss—no, I shouldn’t, if honly they couldn’t call me——” “No, dear, no! they shan’t call you that,” Muriel murmured. “What is his name, Lizzie?” “Oh, ’e ’adn’t er ought to a treated me so—Gawd knows ’ow I loves ’im! No!—I can’t tell ye ’is name, dear miss—don’t hask it!” “But you must tell me, Lizzie.” “Not if I was to die for it, miss!” “If you tell me I can help you, Lizzie, perhaps to—to get your lines.” “Oh, miss, ’e’d never forgive me!” “Then I can do nothing, Lizzie.” The girl sobbed afresh. Muriel rose and went to the window. Out of the dark clouds the stars peeped timorously, as if afraid to look down on the sad, sordid world beneath. A church clock chimed the hour—twelve o’clock—and from the public-house across the way a burst of brawling voices broke. It was illegal she thought to close so late. The candle on the washstand flickered miserably. She went back to the bedside, and with careful, tender hands put back the heavy hair and sponged away the tears. “Lizzie,” she said, and it seemed to her as if the whole of London stood still to listen, “there is some one I love with all my heart—I—I think I could forgive him anything.” She drew in her breath with a long gasp. “Now—won’t you tell me his name, Lizzie?” she pleaded. The two women looked at each other. The girl raised herself on her elbow and stared as if she were weighing the soul of the other woman (she had forgotten she was a lady). At last she sank back satisfied. “If she had a man,” Lizzie thought, “she might understand.” “It’s—it’s Hobbs—Dick Hobbs,” she said. “Ye won’t be ’ard on ’im, miss. They can’t ’elp it, can they? Not as I knows on—an’ hanyway ’twere all my fault, I think.”