“She pretty?”

“Is she not?”

“No.”

“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole court?”

“Rot the admiration of the whole court! Who made the Old

Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”

“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with

sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face; “do

you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with

the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to

the golden-haired doll?”

“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons

within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a

perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll

have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”

When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle,

to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through

its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold

and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole

scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning

round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand

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had risen far away, and the fine spray of it in its advance had

begun to overwhelm the city.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man

stood still on his w