Vestalia turned her face into the shadow, and said nothing. Mosscrop felt her deep breathing against his arm.
“You have been very dutiful and obedient all day,” he began, as they moved along toward Ludgate Hill. “I repudiate the suggestion that you are capable of mutiny now. Let us speak plainly, dear little lady. How can you suppose that, having watched over you all day and gladly made myself responsible for your well-being since before breakfast, I could wash my hands of you now, and calmly say ‘goodbye’ at a street corner?”
“You have been very very kind,” faltered Vestalia.
“And for that reason it follows that I should be very callous and brutal now, does it? I don’t see the logic myself.”
“I haven’t meant that at all,” she interposed in a low voice. She bent her head so that Mosserop could not see her face.
“We will develop and analyze your meanings at our leisure,” he said, with a note of authority. “It is more important for the moment to make clear what I mean. The facts are simplicity itself. You have no home, no belongings, no place to sleep, no knowledge of where the morning’s breakfast is to come from. You are a beautiful girl, and it is true our civilisation is so arranged that beautiful girls rarely starve to death. I do not recall having heard of a single instance, for that matter. But your position makes an imperative demand for assistance from somebody. It cried aloud for help at an early hour this morning. It happened that the appeal was heard and answered. If we were superstitious, we should call it providential.”
“Oh, but I do!” protested the girl.
“Very well, then, we are superstitious, and it was providential. These things are governed, I am informed, by immutable laws. Ergo, it is still providential. Who are we, that we should fly in the face of Providence? I adjure you to put away such impious thoughts!”
A little sobbing catch of the breath was her only answer. He divined that there were tears in her eyes, and slowed his pace as they walked along in the gloom of the deserted descent. At the bottom, under the bridge, the sparkling lights of Fleet Street recalled to him that shops were still open.
“I mentioned that you had no belongings,” he resumed, after they had traversed the Circus in silence. “There are little odds and ends of things that you want—the necessities of the toilet, et cetera. Here is a shop; take this sovereign and get the bits of haberdashery that occur to you—such as a lady would put in her dressing-bag if she were to stop overnight in the country. I will go across the way and get the bag itself, and come back for you.”