Her grace was terse but adequate: "Well--here's may God help us as we deserve!" I dipped my spoon, lifted it with shaking hand, my heart bursting to tell the little dear girl what I thought about her, my lips refusing to do anything of the sort; refusing, indeed, to do anything at all; for having got the spoon that far, I tried to swallow the good stuff that was in it, and--well ... I ... I burst into tears. Yes, I did. "What the devil----" she jerked. "Now what the devil's the matter with---- Oh, I know. I see." "I can't help it," I hiccuped. "It's the st-st-st-stew! It's so goo-goo-good!" "There, that's all right, kid. I know. I been like that. You have a stretch of rotten luck, and you don't get nothing for perhaps a day, and you feel fit to faint, and then at last you get it, and when you got it, can't touch it. Feel all choky, like, don't you? I know. You'll be all right in a minute. Get some more into you!" I did. And I was all right. I sat by her fire for the rest of the evening, and smoked her cigarettes--twelve for a penny. And we talked; rather good talk, I fancy. As the food warmed me, so I came out of my shell. And gradually the superior motherliness of my hostess disappeared; I was no longer abject under her gaze; I no longer felt like a sheepish schoolboy. I saw her as what she really was--a pale, rather fragile, very girlish girl. We talked torrentially. We broke into one another's sentences without apology. We talked simultaneously. We hurled autobiography at each other.... That was my last week in Kingsland Road; for luck turned, and I found work--of a sort. I left on the Saturday. I parted from her at Cudgett Street corner. I never asked her name; she never asked mine. She just shook hands, and remarked, airily, "Well, so long, kid. Good luck." A MUSICAL NIGHT THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES _AT THE PIANO_ _Cane chairs, a sleek piano, table and bed in a room Lifted happily high from the loud street's fermentation; Tobacco and chime of voices wreathing out of the gloom, Out of the lilied dusk at the firelight's invitation. Then, in the muffled hour, one, strange and gracious and sad, Moves from the phantom hearth, and, with infinite delicacies, Looses his lissome hands along the murmurous keys._ _Valse, mazurka, and nocturne, prelude and polonaise Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, The radiant hands light up the enchanted gloom With the pure flame of life from the shadowless tomb._ A MUSICAL NIGHT THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES