What sweet laughter it was?  How unlike the shrill discord whereby the ordinary workgirl expresses her foolish mirth!  For years Sidney Kirkwood had been unused to utter any sound of merriment; even his smiling was done sadly.  But of late he had grown conscious of the element of joy m Jane’s character, had accustomed himself to look for its manifestations—­to observe the brightening of her eyes which foretold a smile, the moving of her lips which suggested inward laughter—­and he knew that herein, as in many another matter, a profound sympathy was transforming him.  Sorrow such as he had suffered will leave its mark upon the countenance long after time has done its kindly healing, and in Sidney’s case there was more than the mere personal affliction tending to confirm his life in sadness.  With the ripening of his intellect, he saw only more and more reason to condemn and execrate those social disorders of which his own wretched experience was but an illustration.  From the first, his friendship with Snowdon had exercised upon him a subduing influence; the old man was stern enough in his criticism of society, but he did not belong to the same school as John Hewett, and the sober authority of his character made appeal to much in Sidney that had found no satisfaction amid the uproar of Clerkenwell Green.  For all that, Kirkwood could not become other than himself; his vehemence was moderated, but he never affected to be at one with Snowdon in that grave enthusiasm of far-off hope which at times made the old man’s speech that of an exhorting prophet.  Their natural parts were reversed; the young eyes declared that they could see nothing but an horizon of blackest cloud, whilst those enfeebled by years bore ceaseless witness to the raying forth of dawn.

And so it was with a sensation of surprise that Sidney first became aware of light-heartedness in the young girl who was a silent hearer of so many lugubrious discussions.  Ridiculous as it may sound—­as Sidney felt it to be—­he almost resented this evidence of happiness; to him, only just recovering from a shock which would leave its mark upon his life to the end, his youth wronged by bitter necessities, forced into brooding over problems of ill when nature would have bidden him enjoy, it seemed for the moment a sign of shallowness that Jane could look and speak cheerfully.  This extreme of morbid feeling proved its own cure; even in reflecting upon it, Sidney was constrained to laugh contemptuously at himself.  And therewith opened for him a new world of thought.  He began to study the girl.  Of course he had already occupied himself much with the peculiarities of her position, but of Jane herself he knew very little; she was still, in his imagination, the fearful and miserable child over whose shoulders he had thrown his coat one bitter night; his impulse towards her was one of compassion merely, justified now by what he heard of her mental slowness, her bodily sufferings.  It would take very long to analyse the process whereby