Miss Bacon looked away again hastily. "You go," she muttered, "I don't need tea, I----" "You are going to come and have tea with me," Joan interrupted. It had flashed on her that Miss Bacon had not even the money for that. Over the hot buttered toast and the tea Miss Bacon poured out her troubles to Joan. They came, once she had started, in an unquenchable flood of reminiscences. The little woman had reached the last inch of endurance; the kindly sympathy, the touch of Joan's hands broke down all barriers of reserve or caution. She had been a governess, it appeared, and during all her years of service she had laid by enough money to buy the business at Baker Street. "I got it cheap," she owned. "I can see now that the other people must have failed too, and I have no head for business. I am absolutely at the end of things now; if I died to-morrow it would be a pauper's funeral. I often think of that when I see a gorgeous hearse and procession passing through the street." Her words were ridiculous, but real tragedy looked out of her eyes. "Ruin stares me in the face," she went on, "from every paper I read, from every person I meet. I have no money, not even enough to buy food, as you have guessed. Ruin! and I have not the courage to get out of it all. I have never been very brave." "But I think you have been brave," Joan tried to reassure her. "You have held on for so long alone. And I expect we have turned a corner now, things will be better to-morrow." Miss Bacon stared at her teacup with hopeless eyes. "That is what I used to think at first," she said, "to-morrow will be better than to-day--it never has been yet." She rose to go, and Joan, prompted by a sudden quick desire to help, leant forward and caught hold of her coat. The tragedy of the withered figure, the stupid, aimless face, struck her as the cruellest thing she had yet seen in life. What were her own troubles compared to this other's dull facing of loneliness, failure and death. "You must cheer up, you really must," she begged; "and as for the money part, let me pay down the rest of my fee now. I have got three pounds out with me; do take it, please do, you see it really is yours." Taking the money seemed to add an extra gloom to Miss Bacon's outlook; none the less she did not require very much persuading, and Joan, pressing it into her hand, piloted her across the road and saw her into the Underground station. It was the last glimpse she was to have of the quaint figure which had crossed her life for so short a time, but that she did not realize. She only knew that her heart ached because she had been able to do so little to help, and because Miss Bacon's story had brought suddenly to her mind a knowledge of how terribly hard life can be to those who are not strong enough to stand against it.