“They didn’t do a thing to this place, did they?” was her comment.  “There was two guys in here to-night who got a notion they were funny.”

Hodder had thought to have fathomed all the horrors of her existence, but it was not until he looked into this room that the bottomless depths of it were brought home to him.  Could it be possible that the civilization in which he lived left any human being so defenceless as to be at the mercy of the ghouls who had been here?  The very stale odours of the spilled whiskey seemed the material expression of the essence of degraded souls; for a moment it overpowered him.  Then came the imperative need of action, and he began to right one of the chairs.  She darted forward.

“Cut it out!” she cried.  “What business have you got coming in here and straightening up?  I was a fool to bring you, anyway.”

It was in her eyes that he read her meaning, and yet could not credit it.  He was abashed—­ashamed; nay, he could not define the feeling in his breast.  He knew that what he read was the true interpretation of her speech, for in some manner—­he guessed not how—­she had begun to idealize him, to feel that the touch of these things defiled him.

“I believe I invited myself,” he answered, with attempted cheerfulness.  Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely what others had done!

“When you asked me a little while ago whether I had left the Church, I let you think I had.  I am still connected with St. John’s, but I do not know how long I shall continue to be.”

She was on her knees with dustpan and whiskbroom, cleaning up the fragments of glass on the stained carpet.  And she glanced up at him swiftly, diviningly.

“Say—­you’re in trouble yourself, ain’t you?”

She got up impulsively, spilling some of the contents of the pan.  A subtle change had come in her, and under the gallantly drooping feathers of her hat he caught her eye—­the human eye that so marvellously reflects the phases of the human soul:  the eye which so short a time before hardily and brazenly had flashed forth its invitation, now actually shone with fellowship and sympathy.  And for a moment this look was more startling, more appalling than the other; he shrank from it, resented it even more.  Was it true that they had something in common?  And if so, was it sin or sorrow, or both?

“I might have known,” she said, staring at him.  In spite of his gesture of dissent, he saw that she was going over the events of the evening from her new point of view.

“I might have known, when we were sitting there in Harrods, that you were up against it, too, but I couldn’t think of anything but the way I was fixed.  The agent’s been here twice this week for the rent, and I was kind of desperate for a square meal.”

Hodder took the dustpan from her hand, and flung its contents into the fireplace.

“Then we are both fortunate,” he said, “to have met each other.”