The wanderers turned into Pall Mall, and, traversing it, reached the Strand, where the meeting of human currents forms a whirlpool. Threading their way with difficulty, he felt the restraining hand on his arm, as he had done two hundred times that day. The girl had stopped opposite a hollow-eyed old woman offering violets, from her seat on a box, to the thousands who cared as little for her flowers as for her. Once more he produced the inevitable coin, and again received a blessing, as trembling, unlovely fingers clutched it. He was about to turn away, when something almost attractive in the wrinkled face held his attention. The woman had looked searchingly at the girl, then into his eyes, and, touched by sudden sympathy, there was a faded echo of comeliness in her features that came and went, like a glow caused by a breath of air on ashes that seemed dead. "What is it, mother?" he asked, holding the girl's arm. "Business bad?" "Yes--yes," answered the woman in a low, weak voice; "but it's her I'm thinking of. Take care of her, laddie, won't you?" The girl, unable to understand them, leaned over and smiled into the wrinkled face. With a little air of embarrassment Pippa picked half-a-dozen violets from her cluster, holding them out to the woman, who took them with strangely twitching features, just as an encircling current of the Strand caught them in its grip and carried them away. Although they had rested at noon in a quiet hostelry in Oxford Street, after visiting Kensington Gardens where the delightful statue of Peter Pan pleads for belief in fairies, it was obvious that the strain of countless impressions was beginning to bring fatigue to his charge. Accordingly the airman paused in the doorway of a theater and drew her away from the traffic's turmoil. "It is three-thirty," he said, "and there is a performance inside." Her eyes, which still held their tenderness for the woman of the flowers, sparkled happily. "That is delightful monsieur. Is it a play as I read in my books?" "Alas, Pippa! there are no more plays--only revues." "But there is music?" "There is an orchestra." "It will be droll, monsieur?" "I doubt it, little one; but we shall see." Purchasing tickets from a lordly being in a cage, they entered the theater, where a huge audience was rocking with laughter at the three hundred and sixteenth performance of _Oh Aunt!_ They took their seats just in time to hear the best of a scene between two comedians who, lest the subtlety of their wit be lost, were talking at the top of their lung-power, pulling chairs from underneath one another, colliding frequently, and every now and then, to emphasize some point, kicking each other. Several minutes passed, and wonderingly the French girl gazed at the pair, while the melancholy of her escort's face reached an intensity that threatened tears. "Monsieur." He inclined his face towards hers.