“If there are things wanted here,” he said, “this will buy them.”  And he put some money into her hand.

She did not seem surprised at the incongruity of his shabbiness producing money.

“Well, now,” she said, “I was wonderin’ an’ askin’.  I’d like ’er clean an’ nice, an’ there’s milk wanted bad for the biby.”

In the room they mounted to Glad was trying to feed the child with bread softened in tea.  Polly sat near her looking on with restless, eager eyes.  She had never seen anything of her own baby but its limp newborn and dead body being carried away out of sight.  She had not even dared to ask what was done with such poor little carrion.  The tyranny of the law of life made her want to paw and touch this lately born thing, as her agony had given her no fruit of her own body to touch and paw and nuzzle and caress as mother creatures will whether they be women or tigresses or doves or female cats.

“Let me hold her, Glad,” she half whimpered.  “When she’s fed let me get her to sleep.”

“All right,” Glad answered; “we could look after ’er between us well enough.”

The thief was still sitting on the hearth, but being full fed and comfortable for the first time in many a day, he had rested his head against the wall and fallen into profound sleep.

“Wot’s up?” said Glad when the two men came in.  “Is anythin’ ’appenin’?”

“I have come up here to tell you something,” Dart answered.  “Let us sit down again round the fire.  It will take a little time.”

Glad with eager eyes on him handed the child to Polly and sat down without a moment’s hesitance, avid of what was to come.  She nudged the thief with friendly elbow and he started up awake.

“‘E’s got somethin’ to tell us,” she explained.  “The curick’s come up to ’ear it, too.  Sit ’ere, Polly,” with elbow jerk toward the bundle of sacks.  “It’s got its stummick full an’ it’ll go to sleep fast enough.”

So they sat again in the weird circle.  Neither the strangeness of the group nor the squalor of the hearth were of a nature to be new things to the curate.  His eyes fixed themselves on Dart’s face, as did the eyes of the thief, the beggar, and the young thing of the street.  No one glanced away from him.

His telling of his story was almost monotonous in its semi-reflective quietness of tone.  The strangeness to himself—­though it was a strangeness he accepted absolutely without protest—­lay in his telling it at all, and in a sense of his knowledge that each of these creatures would understand and mysteriously know what depths he had touched this day.

“Just before I left my lodgings this morning,” he said, “I found myself standing in the middle of my room and speaking to Something aloud.  I did not know I was going to speak.  I did not know what I was speaking to.  I heard my own voice cry out in agony, ’Lord, Lord, what shall I do to be saved?’”