orm they mingled with
the women who marched the pavements, and now and again, with curiously
swift and decisive steps glided up to one of them, whispered a few
earnest words into her ear, and proffered a printed ticket. Most of
those spoken to walked on stonily as people do when they meet an
undesirable acquaintance whom they do not wish to recognize. Some
thrust past them rudely; some hesitated and with a hard laugh went
their way; but a few took the tickets and hid them among their laces.

So far as the work was concerned that was all there was to see.
Nothing dramatic happened; no girl fled to them imploring help or
asking to be saved from the persecutions of a man; no girl even
insulted them--for these Officers to be insulted is a thing unknown.
All I saw was the sowing of the seed in very stony ground, where not
one kern out of a thousand is like to germinate and much less to grow.
Yet as experience proves, occasionally it does both germinate and
grow, yes, and bloom and come to the harvest of repentance and
redemption. It is for this that these unwearying labourers scatter
their grain from night to night, that at length they may garner into
their bosoms a scanty but a priceless harvest.

It was a strange scene. The air was hot and heavy, the sky was filled
with black and lowering clouds already laced with lightnings. The
music-halls and restaurants had given out their crowds, the midnight
mart was open. Everywhere were women, all finely dressed, most of them
painted, as could be seen in the glare of the electric lights, some of
them more or less excited with drink, but none turbulent or noisy.
Mixed up with these were the bargainers, men of every degree, the most
of them with faces unpleasant to consider.

Some had made their pact and were departing. I noticed one young girl
whose looks would have drawn attention anywhere, whispering an address
from beneath an enormous feathered hat to the driver of a taxicab,
while her companion, a pleasant-looking, fresh-coloured boy, for he
was scarcely more, entered the vehicle, a self-satisfied air upon his
face. She sprang in also, and the cab with its occupants glided away
out of my ken for ever.

Here and there stalwart, quiet policemen requested loiterers to move
on, and the loiterers obeyed and re-formed in groups behind them; here
and there a respectable woman pushed her way through the throng,
gathering up her skirts as she did so and glancing covertly at this
una