n't a _perfect_ lydy, I'd slap your blankety blank little blank."

At each word of the virile repartee of Cockneydom coming so
incongruously from those soft lips, Lewis's heart went down and down in
big, jolting bumps. Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he stepped out
into the path. Folly looked up and saw him. The look of amazement in his
face, eyes staring and mouth open and gulping, struck and held her for a
second before she realized who it was that stood before her.

For just the fraction of a moment longer she was frightened and puzzled
by Lewis's dumfounded mien; then her mind harked back for the clue and
got it. No one had to tell her that the game was up so far as Lewis was
concerned. She knew it. Her face suddenly crinkled up with mirth. With a
peal of laughter, she dodged him and ran improperly for her very proper
little turnout. He did not follow except with his eyes.

"Larfin' at _us_, governor," jibed the diminutive cockney, putting a
rail between himself and Lewis. "The 'uzzy! The minute I lays my heye on
that marm, I says, 'Blime yer, _you_ ain't no lydy'! I say, governor,
give us a penny."

Lewis turned away and took a few steps gropingly, head down, as though
he walked in a trance. Presently he stopped and came back, feeling with
finger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a gold coin,
looked at it gravely, and flipped it across the rail at the ragamuffin.
Then he turned and walked off with a rapid stride.

The little cockney snatched at the coin, and popped it into his mouth.
Too overwhelmed to speak his gratitude, he stood on his head until Lewis
was out of sight. It was the first time in his life that he had handled,
much less possessed, a "thick un."

CHAPTER LI

The expert surgeon, operating for blindness on the membranes of the eye,
is denied the bulwark of an anesthetic. Such a one will tell you that
the moment of success is the moment most pregnant with disaster. To the
patient who has known only the fraction of life that lies in darkness,
the sudden coming of light is a miracle beyond mere resurrection from
the dead. But he is warned he must avoid any spasm of joy. Should he cry
out and start at the coming of the dawn, in that moment he bids farewell
forever to the light of day.

Something of this shock of sudden sight had come to Lewis, but it came
to him with no spasm of joy. A man who has been drugged does not awake
to joy, but to pain. Liberation and suffering t