Now she rode again in Paul's arms in the old donkey-chaise, with the Ancient One crawling home through the warm scented dusk of a summer night; and Old Paul murmured tales to her that she knew by heart, but yet could never hear too often; and she opened her eyes and blinked away the tears, and saw always the lamp on the little table, and the woman asleep in her chair.
There were, of course, summer mornings even in London—mornings when the fresh young spirit of her, not to be quenched, rose exultant to the sunlight, and craved for air and liberty. But even then the watchful jealousy of Patience had to be reckoned with; she must not go far; she must not stray in this direction nor in that. More often than not Patience insisted on going with her; so that the spectacle was presented of the white-faced girl going through the streets, guiding the slower steps of the old woman. That was how she saw London, and how she knew it for almost four long years.
It seems in a sense incredible; but it is strictly true. Even the people in the same house with her knew nothing of her, and probably cared nothing. She grew up in that bitter narrow environment; came to full womanhood in the heart of the greatest city in the world; and yet knew nothing of the life of the city or of the world at all. She dwelt always in the past, this child of the dark eyes and the unclouded and untouched heart; anything that she saw or heard in the streets through which she passed with the old woman for company went by her, and left no trace. Her necessarily lengthening frocks were lengthened by herself; whatever small vanities sprang up in her, with the growth of her womanhood, were caught deftly enough from the people she saw in the streets, and from shop windows, and were imitated cheaply and dexterously. But the life of loneliness did not change.
Once she escaped—and only once. She must have been nearly seventeen when the chance came, and then it came and was gone before almost she had had time to recover breath. It came in the strangest fashion, and it woke within her something that made her half afraid of herself, even while it filled her with strange delight.
A girl, some years older than herself, climbed the stairs one day, and asked for her—not by name, because few people knew her name at all. Patience met the intruder, and recognised in her a girl who lived in the rooms below—a sharp, bright, rather common girl—easy and good-natured, and knowing London perfectly; and Patience, seeing in her a new danger, confronted her and demanded her errand.
"Well, I thought she might like to go out with me to-night," said the girl, a little aggressively. "I shan't do her no harm; I know my way about. I've got two tickets——"
"No," said Patience in a low voice, as though she would keep the mere knowledge of the thing from the girl in the room behind her. "We keep ourselves to ourselves, thank you; there's nothing we want."
"I don't know that I was talking to you," retorted the other, rather hotly. "It strikes me as rather hard if a girl can't say what she'd like to do or what she wouldn't. And if the opera isn't respectable, then I'd like to know what is?"
Patience felt a hand on her shoulder, and turning a little guiltily, saw Moira standing beside her. She had caught that last word, and understood, curiously enough, what it meant; for Old Paul had spoken of it more than once. Old Paul had been lifted out of himself, it seemed, on occasions of heavy trouble, by this same wonderful opera; had felt his soul rising on wings of music far away from the earth and its troubles. This was Old Paul's business clearly, and Patience must stand aside. So much the girl demanded.
"I think I will go," said Moira, smiling out at the other girl. "It's very kind of you."