Thus Sylvester walked homewards, his thoughts revolving in a vicious circle. At Baker Street Station he passed through a crowd that was gathering around two fringed and feathered coster-girls shrieking and biting and cursing in a policeman's grip. They were too much for one man, for your coster-girl in drink is a she-devil, and possessed of extraordinary activities. One escaped, and as her companion was struggling with the constable, she rushed at his face with a gigantic hat-pin held dagger-wise. In an instant Sylvester had dropped his light coat and had seized the fury by the arms from behind. And there he held her pinioned. She kicked, she butted, she poured out torrents of filth, she struggled, she tried to lie down, to the great excitement of the crowd, who, out of respect for the hat-pin, kept at a reasonable distance off, and expected to see a battle royal in which the slight man in evening dress would get the worst of it. But they were not prepared for such an exhibition of sheer strength on the part of the slight man. He stood like a figure of bronze, holding the foul and frenzied Amazon almost at arm's length, lifting her like a child when she tried to fall, forcing her down when she tried to leap into the air. The tussle, as far as Sylvester was concerned, did not last long; for two policemen, forcing their way through the throng, speedily relieved him of his charge and the lady of the hat-pin. Whereupon Sylvester, cheered by the crowd, coolly took his overcoat from a man who was holding it, and walked away down Baker Street. The incident, although not tending to raise the Eternal Feminine in his esteem, broke the train of his morbid imaginings. He glowed with the sense of victory and chuckled quietly to himself. The successful application of one's own brute force brings exultation to the primitive savage in a man. “I'm not in such bad training, after all,” he said to himself pleasantly. So he sprang up the steps of the house in Weymouth Street in a much healthier frame of mind than that in which he had descended them some hours before. The sudden stirring of the blood had done him good. “Mr. Lanyon is here, sir,” said a servant, meeting him in the hall. “He said he would wait until you came home.” Sylvester disregarded the letters lying on the hall table, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room, where somewhat breathlessly he expressed his delight and wonder at seeing his father. But he was struck almost immediately with dismay at the look of illness on the old man's face. “You have no business to be here,” he exclaimed. “You ought to be in bed. For God's sake, father, what is wrong with you?” He looked at him keenly. “It is the heart, isn't it?”