“What's the matter?” Herold asked, sitting in the chair before the dressing-table, bright with mirrors and electric lights and sticks of grease paint and silver-topped pots and other paraphernalia. “Nothing particular. Only hell, just as usual. I saw that child to-day.” Herold lit a cigarette. “Have you ever speculated on what becomes of the victims in cases of this kind?” asked John. “Not particularly,” said Herold, seeing that John wanted to talk. “What do you think can become of a human creature in the circumstances of this poor little wretch? Her childhood is one vista of bleak ugliness. Never a toy, never a kiss, not even the freedom of the gutter. Unless you 've been there, you can't conceive the soul-crushing despair of that infernal orphanage. She leaves it and goes into the world. She goes out of a kind of dreary Greek hades into a Christian hell. It lasted for months. She was too ignorant and spiritless to complain, and to whom was she to complain? Now she's sent back again, just like a sick animal, to hades. Fancy, they would n't let her have a few flowers in' the room! It makes me mad to think of it. And when she gets well again, she 'll have to earn her living as a little slave in some squalid Household. But what's going to become of that human creature morally and spiritually? That's what I want to know.” “It's an interesting problem,” said Herold. “She may be either a benumbed half-idiot or a vicious, vindictive she-brute.” “Just so,” said John. “That is, if she goes to slave in some squalid household. But suppose she were transferred to different surroundings altogether? Suppose she had ease of life, loving care, and all the rest of it?” The senile travesty of Herold laughed. “You want me to say that she may develop into some sort of flower of womanhood.” “Do you think she might?” John asked seriously. “My dear fellow,” said Herold, “there are Heaven knows how many hundred million human beings on the face of the earth, and every one of them is different from the others. How can one tell what any particular young woman whom one does n't know might or might not do in given circumstances? But if you want me to say whether I think it right for you to step in and look after the poor little devil's future, then I do say it's right. It 's stunning of you. It's the very best thing you can do. It will give the poor little wretch a chance, at any rate, and will give you something outside yourself to think of.” “I was going to do it whether you thought it right or not,” said Risca. Herold laughed again. “For a great, hulking bull of a man you 're sometimes very feminine, John.” “I wanted to tell you about it, that 's all,” said Risca. “I made up my mind this afternoon. The only thing is what the deuce am I to do with a child of fifteen in Fenton Square?” “Is she pretty?” “Lord, no. Coarse, undersized little cockney, ugly as sin.”