IN WHICH WE WATCH AN IMPULSIVE GOOD SAMARITAN'S DEEDS AND HEAR HIS SELF-REPROACHES Lacey and I walked back together, and in Kingsway we were overtaken by Spanton, who had been to a debate at Essex Hall. I observed at once that he and Lacey were antipathetic. It was quite natural, for both are vigorous in their beliefs or impulses, and they look at life from totally different points of view. Lacey is a sentimentalist with roots in the past; Spanton is a scientific state-builder with his eyes on the future. Lacey is disillusioned and tired, content to get through each day as well as he can, expecting little. Spanton is confident and resolute. On our way through Russell Square we passed a girl leaning against the railing of a house, crying. She was dressed in tawdry finery and her left hand was bound in a handkerchief. Lacey was at her side in a moment. "What's it all about?" he asked, in his hearty, kind voice. Amid her sobs she told the story. She had had a quarrel with her man; he had struck her; the table fell with the things on it and she fell too, on a broken glass. He had turned her out. Lacey examined her hand, which was badly cut and still bleeding. "We must get this bound up," he said, and we found a cab and drove to a chemist's in New Oxford Street which is open all night, as, of course, Lacey knew. "And what is the next thing?" he said. "Where do you live?" "I couldn't go back there," the girl said, clinging to him. She was a fine girl, rather on the coarse side, with a dull red complexion, thick lips, and blunt nose; but her large, dark-brown eyes were really splendid. Lacey comforted her and reassured her, stroking her other hand. Spanton said nothing. There had been quarrels before, she explained, and the man's brutality had been increasing. This was the last. Nothing would get her there again. "Very well, then," said Lacey, "we must find you a bedroom, and to-morrow I will see what I can do. It is too late now to talk." He thought a while and then told the cabman to drive to a street off the Hampstead Road. "When I was in business," he said, "I had an old carpenter named Dimmage. I dare say he's got a room empty; we shall just catch him coming home after the 'Time, gentlemen, please.'" Lacey was right. Mr. Dimmage had just returned and was locking up. His delight--rendered a shade more exuberant by his evening's libations--at recognizing his old employer was a joy to watch. The story was soon told, and Mrs. Dimmage, extricated from bed, appeared, dishevelled and testy, at the head of the narrow stairs. She descended for the purpose of scrutinizing the girl a little more closely under the candle-light, and then retreated again. "We've no room here," she said. (It is an open question whether women are not _au fond_ women's worst enemy.) "But what about that truckle-bed where Jim used to be?" said the tactless but hero-worshipping Dimmage.