the penny scent fountains of to-day.  I was smiling over this quaint olfactory coincidence, and wondering whether any human being alive at that moment had ever read the Sieur Houssaie’s book, when a tug at my arm, such as a neglected terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to the workaday world.  I turned sharply and met a pair of melting, brown, piteous, imploring dog’s eyes, belonging not to a terrier, but to the disregarded female in black.

“Will you please, sir, to tell me what I must do.”

I stared.  She was not in the least like what my half-conscious glance at the female in black had taken her to be.  She was quite young, remarkably good looking.  Even at the first instant I was struck by her eyes and the mass of bronze hair and the twitching of a childish mouth.  But she had an untidy, touzled, raffish appearance, due to I knew not what investiture of disrepute.  Her hands—­for she wore no gloves—­wanted washing.

“What a young girl like yourself must not do,” said I, “is to enter into conversation with men in public places.”

“Then I shall have to die,” she said, forlornly, edging away from my side.

She had the oddest little foreign accent.  I looked at her again more critically, and discovered what it was that made her look so disreputable.  She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too big for her.  Great pleats of it were secured by pins in unexpected places, so that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of decoration—­black velvet and bugles—­on the bodice.  Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged, fat, second-hand-clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago for synagogue wear.  On the girlish figure it looked preposterous.  Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet trimmed in black, with a cheap black feather drooping brokenly.

Her eyes gave me a reproachful glance and turned away again.  Then she shrugged her shoulders and sniffed.  My mother had a housemaid once who always sniffed like that before beginning to cry.  My position was untenable.  I could not remain stonily on the seat while this grotesquely attired damsel wept; and for the life of me I could not get up and leave her.  She looked at me again.  Those swimming, pleading eyes were scarcely human.  I capitulated.

“Don’t cry.  Tell me what I can do for you,” I said.

She moved a few inches nearer.

“I want to find Harry,” she said; “I have lost him.”

“Who’s Harry?” I naturally inquired.

“He is to be my husband.”

“What’s his other name?”

“I have forgotten,” she said, spreading out her hands.

“Don’t you know any one else in London?” I asked.

She shook her head mournfully.  “And I am getting so hungry.”

I suggested that there were restaurants in London.

“But I have no money,” she objected.  “No money and nothing at all but this.”  She designated her dress.  “Isn’t it ugly?”