d stood in the only unoccupied spot he
could find, behind a pillar. When he had made himself as comfortable
as possible by turning up his collar against the sharp winds that
continually entered from the street, he had peered forward, and seen
in front of his enclosure another and larger enclosure also crowded
with people, but more expensive people. After a blank interval of
thirty minutes a band had begun to play at an incredible distance in
front of him, extinguishing the noises of traffic in the street. After
another interval an oblong space rather further off even than the band
suddenly grew bright, and Edward Henry, by curving his neck first
to one side of the pillar and then to the other, had had tantalizing
glimpses of the interior of a doll's drawing-room and of male and
female dolls therein.

He could only see, even partially, the inferior half of the
drawing-room--a little higher than the heads of the dolls--because the
rest was cut off from his vision by the lowness of his own ceiling.

The dolls were talking, but he could not catch clearly what they said,
save at the rare moments when an omnibus or a van did not happen to be
thundering down the street behind him. Then one special doll had come
exquisitely into the drawing-room, and at the sight of her the five
hundred people in front of him, and numbers of other people perched
hidden beyond his ceiling, had clapped fervently and even cried aloud
in their excitement. And he, too, had clapped fervently, and had
muttered "Bravo!" This special doll was a marvel of touching and
persuasive grace, with a voice--when Edward Henry could hear it--that
melted the spine. This special doll had every elegance and seemed to
be in the highest pride of youth.

At the close of the affair, as this special doll sank into the embrace
of a male doll from whom she had been unjustly separated, and then
straightened herself, deliciously and confidently smiling, to take the
tremendous applause of Edward Henry and the rest, Edward Henry thought
that he had never assisted at a triumph so genuine and so inspiring.

Oblivious of the pain in his neck, and of the choking, foul atmosphere
of the enclosure, accurately described as the Pit, he had gone forth
into the street with a subconscious notion in his head that the
special doll was more than human, was half divine. And he had said
afterwards, with immense satisfaction, at Bursley: "Yes, I saw Rose
Euclid in 'Flower of the Heart.'"