The bun came into view from a hidden basket, and the meal began, Julian, Rip, and the lady of the feathers forming a companionable group upon the kerb.  The lady’s curious and almost thrilling expression, which had seemed to beacon from some height of her soul some exceptional and dreary deed, faded under the influence of the dough and currants.  A smile overspread her thin features.  She examined Julian with a gracious interest.

“It’s easy to see you’ve been makin’ a night of it, Bertie,” she remarked casually at length, in the suffocated voice of one divided between desire of conversation and love of food.

“You think so?” said Julian.

“Think so, dear, I’m sure so!  Ask me another as I don’t know; do darlin’.”

Julian took another draught from the thick coffee-cup that held so amazingly little.

“And what about yourself?” he said.  “Why are you out here so early?”

The lady of the feathers cast a suspicious glance upon him.  Then the horror dawned again in her eyes.

“I’m afraid to go home,” she said.  “Yes, that’s a fact.”

“Afraid—­why?” Julian spoke abstractedly.  In truth he merely talked to this floating wisp of humanity to distract his mind, and thought of her as a strange female David of the streets sent to make a cockney music in his ears that his soul might be rid of its evil spirit.

“Never you mind why,” the lady answered.

She shivered suddenly, violently, as a dog just come out of water.

“Have another cup?” Julian said.

“And a bun, dearie,” the lady again rejoined.  She shook her head till all the feathers danced.

“Never you mind why,” she said, reverting again to his vagrant question.  “There’s some things as don’t do to talk about.”

“I’m sure I’ve no wish to pry into your private affairs,” Julian rejoined carelessly.

But again he noticed the worn terror of her face.  Surely that night she, too, had passed through some unwonted experience, which had written its sign-manual amid the paint and powder of her shame.

The lady stared back at him.  Beneath her tinted eyelids the fear seemed to grow like a weed.  Tears followed, rolling over her cheeks and mingling with the coffee in her cup.

“Oh dear,” she murmured lamentably.  “Oh, dear, oh!”

“What’s the matter?” said Julian.

But she only shook her head, with the peevish persistence of weak obstinacy, and continued vaguely to weep as one worn down by chill circumstance.

Julian turned his eyes from her to the coffee-stall, in which the sharp-featured youth now negligently leant, well satisfied with the custom he had secured.  Behind the youth’s head it seemed to Julian that the phantom flame hung trembling, as if blown by the light wind of the morning.  He laid his hand on the lady’s left arm and unconsciously closed his fingers firmly over the flesh, while, in a low voice, he said to her: