him not more starved, but less, to look at the goodies and the cakes; they imagined eating them; but they were both too sickly, he thinks, to be really hungry.  As for the bazaar, with its dolls and toys, and its Father Christmas, and bright lights, they both thought it paradise.  They used to flatten their noses against the glass; sometimes a shopman drove them away; but they came back and back.  At last the iron shutters would come down—­slowly.  Then he and his sister would stoop—­and stoop—­to get a last look.  Presently there would be only a foot of bliss left; then they both sank down flat on their stomachs on the pavement, and so stayed—­greedily—­till all was dark, and paradise had been swallowed up.  Well, one night, the show had been specially gorgeous; they took hands afterward, and ran home.  Their father had just come in.  Mr. Barton can remember his staggering into the room.  I’ll give it in his words.  ‘Mother, have you got anything in the house?’ ‘Nothing, Tom.’  And mother began to cry.  ‘Not a bit of bread, mother?’ ’I gave the last bit to the children for their teas.’  Father said nothing, but he lay down on the bed.  Then he called me.  ‘Johnnie,’ he said, ’I’ve got work—­for next week—­but I sha’n’t never go to it—­it’s too late,’ and then he asked me to hold his hand, and turned his face on the pillow.  When my mother came to look, he was dead.  ’Starvation and exhaustion’—­the doctor said.”

Marion Vincent paused.

“It’s just like any other story of the kind—­isn’t it?” Her smile turned on Diana.  “The charitable societies and missions send them out by scores in their appeals.  But somehow as he told it just now, down-stairs, in that glaring hall, with the champagne going round—­it seemed intolerable.”

“And you mean also”—­said Diana, slowly—­“that a man with that history can’t know or care very much about the Empire?”

“Our minds are all picture-books,” said the woman beside her, in a low, dreamy voice:  “it depends upon what the pictures are.  To you the words ’England’—­and the ’Empire’—­represent one set of pictures—­all bright and magnificent—­like the Christmas Bazaar.  To John Barton and me”—­she smiled—­“they represent another.  We too have seen the lights, and the candles, and the toys; we have admired them, as you have; but we know the reality is not there.  The reality is in the dark streets, where men tramp, looking for work; it is in the rooms where their wives and children live stifled and hungry—­the rooms where our working folk die—­without having lived.”

Her eyes, above her pale cheeks, had opened to their fullest extent—­the eyes of a seer.  They held Diana.  So did the voice, which was the voice of one in whom tragic passion and emotion are forever wearing away the physical frame, as the sea waves break down a crumbling shore.

Suddenly Diana bent over her, and took her hands.

“I wonder why you thought me worth talking to like this?” she said, impetuously.