rmour, this woman without her ermine, these
in the crowd without their motley and the merry, merry jangling of
the bells, and you will find how slender are the muscles that the
armour lays bare, how shrivelled the breast that the ermine strips,
how dragged and weary is that pitiable, naked figure which a few
moments before was dancing fantastically, grimacing with its ape.

Traill took it as it came; the man forced to a crude philosophy, as
Life, if we get enough of it, will force every soul of us. You must
have a philosophy if you are going to accept Life. Even if you refuse
it, you must have a philosophy, call it pessimistic, what you wish,
it is still a point of view. The "temporary insanity" of the coroner's
court is most times a vile hypocrisy, invented to soothe a Christian
conscience.

So long as he found enough work to do, his spirits were light. He
had a normal contempt for the temperament that is known as artistic,
despised the variability of mood, ridiculed its April uncertainty.
This is the man who hews his way through Life, making no wide passage
perhaps, no definite pathway for the thousands who are looking for
the broad and simple track; but cuts down, lops off, with the sheer
strength of dogged determination, the hundred obstacles that beset
his progress.

When the clock at the Law Courts was striking the half-hour after
twelve, he came up out of that depth of journalism which lies like
a hidden world below the level of Fleet Street and made his way along
towards the Strand. There was a definite intention in his movements.
He walked quickly; turned up without hesitation into Southampton
Street, and again into King Street. There the speed of his steps
lessened and, walking past the premises of Bonsfield & Co., he kept
his eyes in the direction of the window at which he had first seen
Sally Bishop at work.

She was there, her fingers more lively now than when he had seen them
before, in their eternal dance upon the untiring keys. In the
lingering glance he took at her as he walked slowly by, there was
much that was curiosity, but a greater interest. Thoughts had swept
through his mind since the previous Saturday night. He saw her now
from a different point of view. He still found her
attractive-compellingly so. There was something exquisitely naive
about her, an innocence that was precious. In all the sordid side
of life that he had seen--that was his daily portion to see, for the
journalism of a fre