The play over, he was in no mood to go straight home.  He lit a cigar and drifted with the current westward, out of the Strand and into Pall Mall.  A dispute between a cabdriver and his fare induced him to pause for a moment under the colonnade, and, when the little cluster of people had moved on, he still stood leaning against one of the pillars, enjoying the mild air and the scent of his cigar.  He felt his elbow touched, and, looking round with indifference, met the kind of greeting for which he was prepared.  He shook his head and did not reply; then the sham gaiety of the voice all at once turned to a very real misery, and the girl began to beg instead of trying to entice him in the ordinary way.  He looked at her again, and was shocked at the ghastly wretchedness of her daubed face.  She was ill, she said, and could scarcely walk about, but must get money somehow; if she didn’t, her landlady wouldn’t let her sleep in the house again, and she had nowhere else to go to.  There could be no mistake about the genuineness of her story, at all events as far as bodily suffering went.  Waymark contrasted her state with his own, and took out what money he had in his pocket; it was the change out of a sovereign which he had received at the theatre, and he gave her it all.  She stared, and did not understand.

“Are you coming with me?” she asked, feeling obliged to make a hideous attempt at professional coaxing in return for such generosity.

“Good God, no!” Waymark exclaimed.  “Go home and take care of yourself.”

She thanked him warmly, and turned away at once.  As his eye followed her, he was aware that somebody else had drawn near to him from behind.  This also was a girl, but of a different kind.  She was well dressed, and of graceful, rounded form; a veil almost hid her face, but enough could be seen to prove that she had good looks.

“That a friend of yours?” she asked abruptly, and her voice was remarkably full, clear, and sweet.

Waymark answered with a negative, looking closely at her.

“Then why did you give her all that money?”

“How do you know what I gave her?”

“I was standing just behind here, and could see.”

“Well?”

“Nothing; only I should think you are one out of a thousand.  You saved me a sovereign, too; I’ve watched her begging of nearly a dozen people, and I couldn’t have stood it much longer.”

“You would have given her a sovereign?”

“I meant to, if she’d failed with you.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“Never saw her before to-night.”

“Then you must be one out of a thousand.”

The girl laughed merrily.

“In that case,” she said, “we ought to know each other, shouldn’t we?”

“If we began by thinking so well of each other,” returned Waymark, smiling, “we should not improbably suffer a grievous disappointment before long.”