"I stared, broom in hand, aghast at the waste. 'They won't blow up if I mix 'em?' I said.
"'Blow up!' said Mr. Humberg. 'It's only stale water. There's been nothing else in these bottles for a score of years. Stuff I want is behind the dispensary partition—and it's different stuff nowadays. Wash 'em out—and then we'll put in some water from the pump. We just have 'em for the look of 'em. The old women wouldn't be happy if we hadn't got 'em there."
PART II
The Loves and Death of Harry Mortimer Smith
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
FANNY DISCOVERS HERSELF
§ 1
"And now," said Sarnac, "I can draw near to the essentials of life and tell you the sort of thing love was in that crowded, dingy, fear-ruled world of the London fogs and the amber London sunshine. It was a slender, wild-eyed, scared and daring emotion in a dark forest of cruelties and repressions. It soon grew old and crippled, bitter-spirited and black-hearted, but as it happened, death came early enough for me to die with a living love still in my heart...."
"To live again," said Sunray very softly.
"And love again," said Sarnac, patting her knee. "Let me see——...."
He took a stake that had fallen from the fire and thrust it into the bright glow at the centre and watched it burst into a sierra of flames.