John nodded. She picked him up, and once her fingers had touched him, the spell of his dignity was cast. "What is he? Where did you get him? What does he mean?" One question fell fast upon another. "He’s my little brass man," said John. "He’s an old seal, over a hundred years old----" And he told her the whole story. When he had finished, the curtain rose once more--outside the _Café_ Momus with the babel of children and the hum and laughter of a crowd that only a city southeast of the Thames can know or understand. Through all the act, Jill sat with the little brass man standing boldly beside her. When it was over, she turned to him again. "Aren’t you very miserable when you have to--to part with him?" she asked. "Very.--He comes back as soon as possible. But I’ve made a resolve." "What’s that?" "I’m going to put him out of reach of the indignity. He’s never going to the chapel of unredemption any more." "What are you going to do?" "Give him to you. You are the only person I know of, who has the gift of understanding poverty." "To me?" Instinctively her fingers tightened round him. "To me?" she repeated. He smiled and bent his head. "He seals our friendship," said he. This was his way of telling her that he knew she understood. The perfect nonsense of the gift--a figure in brass that cost seven’ shillings and had been pledged and redeemed for six, times out of number--this had little or nothing to do with it. Everything in this world is nonsense; the whole of life is a plethora of ludicrous absurdities, one more fanciful than another. The setting upon the head of a man a fantastic piece of metal and calling in a loud voice that he is king--the holding aloft of another piece of metal, crossed in shape, studded with precious stones, and exhorting those who behold it to fall upon their knees--the placing on the finger of a little circular band--of metal too--and thereby binding irrevocably the lives and freedom of two living beings in an indissoluble bondage, all these things are nonsense, childish, inconsequent nonsense, but for their symbolism and the inner meaning that they hold. The crown is nothing, the cross is nothing, the ring is nothing, too. A goldsmith, a silversmith, a worker in brass, these men can turn them out under the hammer or upon the lathe; they can scatter the earth with them and have done so. From the crown in finest gold and rarest jewels to the crown in paper gilt, the difference can only be in value, not in truth. From the great cross in Westminster Cathedral to the little nickel toy that hangs from the cheapest of rosary beads, the difference is only the same. From the massive ring that the Pope must wear to the tinsel thing that the cracker hides in its gaudy wrappings at Christmas-time, the difference is just the same. Each would serve the other’s purpose. Each would mean nothing but nonsense and empty foolishness except to the eyes which behold the symbolism that they bear.