the little white frock and staggered out into the street. The night was dark, and the snow was still falling. Christmas bells were beginning to peal.... I plunged on and on, my heart beating against my ribs. People stared at me, but I was too distressed to care. How could I go back to Sophie with the insulting message? Suddenly, at the corner of Hyde Park, a most appalling realization flashed through my mind. _I had made no note of the address of the lodgings where Sophie and I were staying!..._ God in heaven! What was I to do? The only man who could help me, my old friend, Joe Gadgers, had gone to Hastings. What could I do? Could I go to the police and say, ‘Will you help me to find the address of some lodgings where an actress is staying? I think it’s somewhere round about Clapham. I don’t know the name of the landlady, or the name of the street, or the number?’ They would have thought I was mad. Perhaps I was mad. Should I go back to Lucy? The child wouldn’t know.... And all this time Sophie was dying. Ah! merciful God! perhaps she would die. If she died before I found her, she would die in the happy belief that the frock had been worn. Her last hours would be blessed with dreams, visions of purity and joy ... whilst I ... I should have no place in them, perhaps ... but I, too, after all, I’d suffered for her sake. Who knows?... Who know...?” His voice broke off in a low sob. I leant forward watching his face, racked with anguish. The room was extraordinarily still.... I dared not look at Alice, but I was conscious of the pearly sheen of her frock under the lamp. Away in the distance one could hear the rumble of the traffic on the High-road. The remorseless tick of the clock was the only sound in the room. Once I thought it ticked louder, and then I realized that it was some one tapping gently at the door. The door opened a little way, and against the dim light in the passage appeared the gaunt face of the old serving-woman, phantom-like, unreal.... “Excuse me, sir.” She peered into the room. The old actor gazed at her with unseeing eyes. He stood with one hand on the back of the chair, and across the other arm lay the white frock; a dignified and pathetic figure. “I’m sorry to trouble you, sir.” “Yes, Mrs. Windsor?” “My little niece ’as just called. I can’t find it anywhere—that little frock I made for ’er last week. I put it in the chest. I thought perhaps you might ’ave.... Oh! there it is, sir. Do you mind—? Thank you very much, sir. I’m sorry to have disturbed the company.” In the sanctuary of our bedroom that night, my wife said: “Did you really believe that that writing on the photograph was by Henry Irving?”