The lady's curious and almost thrilling expression, which
had seemed to beacon from some height of her soul some exceptional and
dreary deed, faded under the influence of the dough and currants. A smile
overspread her thin features. She examined Julian with a gracious
interest.
"It's easy to see you've been makin' a night of it, Bertie," she remarked
casually at length, in the suffocated voice of one divided between desire
of conversation and love of food.
"You think so?" said Julian.
"Think so, dear, I'm sure so! Ask me another as I _don't_ know; do
darlin'."
Julian took another draught from the thick coffee-cup that held so
amazingly little.
"And what about yourself?" he said. "Why are you out here so early?"
The lady of the feathers cast a suspicious glance upon him. Then the
horror dawned again in her eyes.
"I'm afraid to go home," she said. "Yes, that's a fact."
"Afraid--why?" Julian spoke abstractedly. In truth he merely talked to
this floating wisp of humanity to distract his mind, and thought of her
as a strange female David of the streets sent to make a cockney music
in his ears that his soul might be rid of its evil spirit.
"Never you mind why," the lady answered.
She shivered suddenly, violently, as a dog just come out of water.
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