Before I had time to pull myself together 'Enrietter had told her story,--so poor a story it showed how desperate now was her case. She had been quiet all morning--no one had come--she had got through the extra work I left with her. About three the milkman rang. A high wind was blowing. The door, when she opened it, banged in her face and cut her head open. And it had bled! She had only just succeeded in stopping it. One part of her story, anyway, was true beyond dispute. That terrible, gaping wound spoke for itself. I did not know what to do. I was new in the neighbourhood, and my acquaintance with doctors anywhere is slight. But I could not turn her into the street, I could not even leave her under my own roof all night, like that. Something had to be done, and I ran downstairs to consult the old Housekeeper, who, after her half century in the Quarter, might be expected to know how to meet any emergency. More horrors awaited me in her room,--like Macbeth, I was supping full with horrors,--for she had another story to tell, and, as I listened, the ghastly face upstairs, with the gaping red wound, became a mere item in an orgy more appropriate to the annals of the Rougon-Macquarts than, I devoutly trust, to ours. I cannot tell the story as the Housekeeper told it. She had a trick of going into hysterics at moments of excitement, and as in all the years she had been in charge she had never seen such goings on, it followed that in all those years, she had never been so hysterical. She gasped and sobbed out her tale of horrors, and, all the while, her daughter, who was in _the_ profession, sat apart, and, in the exasperating fashion of the chorus of a Greek play, kept up a running commentary emphasizing the points too emphatic to need emphasis. To tell the story in my own way: I was hardly out of the house when 'Enrietter had a visit from a "gentleman,"--that was the Housekeeper's description of him, and, as things go in England, he was a gentleman, which makes my story the more sordid. How 'Enrietter had sent him word the coast was clear I do not pretend to say, though I believe the London milkman has a reputation as the Cupid's Postman of the kitchen, and I recalled afterwards two or three notes 'Enrietter had received from her sister by district messenger,--the same sister, no doubt, who gave her the drop of brandy. Towards noon 'Enrietter and her gentleman were seen to come downstairs and go out together. Where they went, what they did during the three hours of their absence, no one knew,--no one will ever know. Sometimes, in looking back, the greatest horrors to me are the unknown chapters in the story of that day's doings. They were seen to return, about three, in a hansom. The gentleman got out, unsteadily. 'Enrietter followed and collapsed in a little heap on the pavement. He lifted her, and staggered with her in by the door and up the three long flights of stairs to our chambers.