Taking out his pouch, he rolled a cigarette.  The white young man bent his dull wink on Thyme, who, wrinkling her nose, was pretending to be far away.

Mounting the narrow stairs that smelt of walls and washing and red herrings, Thyme spoke:  “Now, you see, it wasn’t so simple as you thought.  I don’t want to go up; I don’t want to see her.  I shall wait for you here.”  She took her stand in the open doorway of the little model’s empty room.  Martin ascended to the second floor.

There, in the front room, Mrs. Hughs was seen standing with the baby in her arms beside the bed.  She had a frightened and uncertain air.  After examining her wrist, and pronouncing it a scratch, Martin looked long at the baby.  The little creature’s toes were stiffened against its mother’s waist, its eyes closed, its tiny fingers crisped against her breast.  While Mrs. Hughs poured forth her tale, Martin stood with his eyes still fixed on the baby.  It could not be gathered from his face what he was thinking, but now and then he moved his jaw, as though he were suffering from toothache.  In truth, by the look of Mrs. Hughs and her baby, his recipe did not seem to have achieved conspicuous success.  He turned away at last from the trembling, nerveless figure of the seamstress, and went to the window.  Two pale hyacinth plants stood on the inner edge; their perfume penetrated through the other savours of the room—­and very strange they looked, those twin, starved children of the light and air.

“These are new,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” murmured Mrs. Hughs.  “I brought them upstairs.  I didn’t like to see the poor things left to die.”

From the bitter accent of these words Martin understood that they had been the little model’s.

“Put them outside,” he said; “they’ll never live in here.  They want watering, too.  Where are your saucers?”

Mrs. Hughs laid the baby down, and, going to the cupboard where all the household gods were kept, brought out two old, dirty saucers.  Martin raised the plants, and as he held them, from one close, yellow petal there rose up a tiny caterpillar.  It reared a green, transparent body, feeling its way to a new resting-place.  The little writhing shape seemed, like the wonder and the mystery of life, to mock the young doctor, who watched it with eyebrows raised, having no hand at liberty to remove it from the plant.

“She came from the country.  There’s plenty of men there for her!”

Martin put the plants down, and turned round to the seamstress.

“Look here!” he said, “it’s no good crying over spilt milk.  What you’ve got to do is to set to and get some work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t say it in that sort of way,” said Martin; “you must rise to the occasion.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want a tonic.  Take this half-crown, and get in a dozen pints of stout, and drink one every day.”