‘What time is it, please?’ I asked her.

‘Better than half-past six, ma’am,’ said she.

She was young and emaciated.

‘Have you got a hat you can lend me?  Or I’ll buy it from you.’

‘A hat, ma’am?’

‘Yes, a hat,’ I repeated impatiently.  And I flushed.  ’I must go out at once, and I’ve—­I’ve no hat And I can’t—­’

It is extraordinary how in a crisis one’s organism surprises one.  I had thought I was calm and full of self-control, but I had almost no command over my voice.

‘I’ve got a boat-shaped straw, ma’am, if that’s any use to you,’ said the girl kindly.

What she surmised or what she knew I could not say.  But I have found out since in my travels, that hotel chambermaids lose their illusions early.  At any rate her tone was kindly.

‘Get it me, there’s a good girl,’ I entreated her.

And when she brought it, I drew out the imitation pearl pins and put them between my teeth, and jammed the hat on my head and skewered it savagely with the pins.

‘Is that right?’

‘It suits you better than it does me, ma’am, I do declare,’ she said.  ‘Oh, ma’am, this is too much—­I really couldn’t!’

I had given her five shillings.

‘Nonsense!  I am very much obliged to you,’ I whispered hurriedly, and ran off.

She was a good girl.  I hope she has never suffered.  And yet I would not like to think she had died of consumption before she knew what life meant.

I hastened from the hotel.  A man in a blue waistcoat with shining black sleeves was moving a large cocoa-nut mat in the hall, and the pattern of the mat was shown in dust on the tiles where the mat had been.  He glanced at me absently as I flitted past; I encountered no other person.  The square between the hotel and the station was bathed in pure sunshine—­such sunshine as reaches the Five Towns only after a rain-storm has washed the soot out of the air.  I felt, for a moment, obscene in that sunshine; but I had another and a stronger feeling.  Although there was not a soul in the square, I felt as if I was regarding the world and mankind with different eyes from those of yesterday.  Then I knew nothing; to-day I knew everything—­so it seemed to me.  It seemed to me that I understood all sorts of vague, subtle things that I had not understood before; that I had been blind and now saw; that I had become kinder, more sympathetic, more human.  What these things were that I understood, or thought I understood, I could not have explained.  All I felt was that a radical change of attitude had occurred in me.  ’Poor world!

Poor humanity!  My heart melts for you!’ Thus spoke my soul, pouring itself out.  The very stone facings of the station and the hotel seemed somehow to be humanized and to need my compassion.