E. Nesbit

“ THE stairs of number 7b Great Ormonde Street lacked the spacious quality of Daphne’s own staircase, for number 13 had been a great house once, where salons had been held, and hooped and powdered gentry of the Third George’s time had passed up and down those stairs which now echoed so emptily to the pitter-patter of Doris’s brown shoes, and the more strenuous music of Claud’s big boots. The houses in Great Ormonde Street have never, one imagines, welcomed any guest more finicking than a prosperous tradesman and his comfortable family ”

“ Fitzroy Street seemed quite near, as places are near in the sudden evasions of a dream. She must wash her hands and change her dress. Everything was blackened with the all-pervasive charcoal dust of that Great Ormonde Street studio.
Doris was polishing her plate and glass and spoon under Mrs. Delarue’s directions.
“Regular little housekeeper she’s going to learn to be,” said the charwoman. “And how did you find him, miss?”
“He’s all right,” said Daphne. “I’m going on his errand. Doris, you can come, too.” ”

“ That little world of aunts and uncles, comfort and luxury, ill-temper and answering rebellion—this new world of boys and girls chattering of art and drinking cocoa as a dissipation—this other world, only dimly discerned, of girls who were not like the sentimental sweet maidens of fiction, of men who were not like the heroes of novelists—all these worlds died down like a candle flame—went out like a wind-blown candle. ”

“ Then three steps, another door, a short passage—corridor is too wide a name for it—then more stairs very steep and many, and finally a door, not quite shut, on which she knocked, a knock that had no effect on the perceptible universe. The place allotted in Daphne’s scheme of things to Daphne’s heart felt hollow. One’s heart in moments of extreme nervousness doesn’t really beat heavily as novelists would have us believe—it seems to go away altogether. ”

“ Delarue nodded knowingly to herself.
“You’ll stay with Miss Doris till I come home?”
“Now would I leave the dear lamb?” Mrs. Delarue asked; and Doris added: “I should lock the door if she wanted to, and throw the key into the ash-bin—or the ash-tree. Isn’t that a funny joke I made, Daffy? They’re different kinds of ashes, of course,” she added, doubtfully.
“That’s what makes the joke so funny,” said Daphne.
The way from Fitzroy Street to the Mont Blanc is not very easy to find when one has not only not been out alone in London, but has hardly been out alone anywhere. ”

“ It was the worst wound she had ever seen, and it made her feel rather sick, but she dried it and, lips close set, bandaged it with firm fingers and eyes that avoided the charcoal-grimed, blood-stained rags that had served as first-aid.
“What clever hands you have,” he said, looking at them as they worked; “it’s a pity they can’t draw.” ”

“ To draw them. For so long we make the attack through the ears only—and the rich are very deaf—all. I figure to myself an exhibition of paintings in which I will show, to the eyes even of the half-blind, the slime of misery on which they build their palaces.”
“You mean,” said Daphne, lamely enough, “that you’re going to paint poor people?”
“I shall paint misery,” said the Russian, dropping his spoon in the soup so that it splashed across the table onto Daphne’s fried potatoes. “Misery everywhere where I shall see it. In the faces of the tired rich and the tired poor ”

“ He has the air to await someone.”
Daphne stumbled on the edge of her dress as she went up the stairs. Above was another dining-room, smaller, less crowded. At the table in the corner by the open window sat the Russian. He was very unkempt, and very shabby; his elbows were on the table, and his haggard eyes watched the door. He had, as the patron had said, the air to await someone. His eyes did not change as Daphne entered. Indeed, why should they? She walked straight to his table and sat down facing him. ”

“ There was no trace of gallantry in his speech. Only the open gratitude and admiration of one human being for another.
“I’m very glad,” said Daphne, and truly, “to have been able to do anything.”
“You are as good as you are beautiful,” he said, and kissed her hand; “it is too much for one woman’s share.”
“Oh—good-bye,” said Daphne, awkwardly.
Then she stumbled down those precipitous, dirty steps and across the yard, quiet now; for the gas-engine had ceased to pulsate and the men gone to their homes.
She got back to Fitzroy Street somehow, found Doris asleep on the fat lap of Mrs. ”