It was a hard winter's night four years ago, lovely and merciless; and towards midnight I walked home from a theatre to my rooms in St. James's Street. The Venusberg of Piccadilly looked white as a nun with snow and moonlight, but the melancholy music of pleasure, and the sad daughters of joy, seemed not to heed the cold. For another hour death and pleasure would dance there beneath the electric lights.
Through the strange women clustering at the corners I took my way,—women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites,—and I thought, as I looked into their poor painted faces,—faces but half human, vampirish faces, faces already waxen with the look of the grave,—I thought, as I often did, of the poor little girl whom De Quincey loved, the good-hearted little 'peripatetic' as he called her, who had succoured him during those nights, when, as a young man, he wandered homeless about these very streets,—that good, kind little Ann whom De Quincey had loved, then so strangely lost, and for whose face he looked into women's faces as long as he lived. Often have I stood at the corner of Titchfield Street, and thought how De Quincey had stood there night after night waiting for her to come, but all in vain, and how from the abyss of oblivion into which some cruel chance had swept her, not one cry from her ever reached him again.
I thought, too, as I often did, what if the face I seek should be here among these poor outcasts,—golden face hidden behind a mask of shame, true heart still beating true even amidst this infernal world!
Thus musing, I had walked my way out of the throng, and only a figure here and there in the shadows of doorways waited and waited in the cold.
It was something about one of these waiting figures,—some movement, some chance posture,—that presently surprised my attention and awakened a sudden sense of half recognition. She stood well in the shadow, seeming rather to shrink from than to court attention. As I walked close by her and looked keenly into her face, she cast down her eyes and half turned away. Surely, I had seen that tall, noble figure somewhere before, that haughty head; and then with the apparition a thought struck me—but, no! it couldn't be she! not HERE!
"It is," said my soul, as I turned and walked past her again; "you missed her once, are you going to miss her again?"
"It is," said my eyes, as they swept her for the third time; "but she had glorious chestnut hair, and the hair of this woman is—gilded."
"It is she," said my heart; "thank God, it is she!"
So it was that I went up to that tall, shy figure.
"It must be very cold here," I said; "will you not join me in some supper?"