"Poor little girl!" said Gilbert softly, as he seated himself on the edge of the table, and thrust some of his papers out of the way. "She dreams about lodgers—and hopes for the sort that pay. I believe she gets up in the morning, dreadfully afraid that those who owe her money have run away in the night; I believe she goes to bed at night, wondering if by any possibility she can squeeze another bedstead in somewhere to accommodate a fresh one. She would like to go out into the highways and byways, and gather in all possible lodgers, and drive them before her to the house; and keep 'em there for ever. You've only got to say 'Lodgers!' to that girl, and her eyes brighten at once."
"What an extraordinary person!" exclaimed Mr. Jordan Tant, opening his eyes very wide, and staring up at the other man. "What's she do it for?"
"For a living, Tant—for a sordid horrible grinding sweating living." Gilbert got up in his excitement, and began to bang one fist into the palm of his other hand close to the face of Mr. Jordan Tant. "You talk of life—and respectability—and what not; I tell you I've seen more life in a week in Arcadia Street than ever I saw in years before. Look out into the streets; you'll see a dozen sights that shock you—you'll see a dozen things that are unlovely. And yet I tell you that I have stepped in this place straight into the heart of Fairyland—and that I dream dreams, and see visions. And all on account of a pale-faced shabby girl, who lives next door, and lies in wait behind the parlour window to catch the lodgers who never pay her when they come!"
"Why don't you live there yourself?" demanded Mr. Tant. "You'd pay her well enough."
Gilbert shook his head a little sadly. "That wouldn't do at all," he said, "because I should take all the romance out of the thing. Besides, in Arcadia Street you mustn't pay more than a certain amount, or you bring down suspicion upon yourself. No—my method is a more subtle one: I am the mysterious man who lives next door—(which is quite a great way off in Arcadia Street, I can assure you)—and I appear to her only with a sort of halo of romance about me."
"You're in love with her, I suppose?" suggested Mr. Tant.
"That's crude—and untrue," said Gilbert. "That's the only thing you sort of people seem to think about: you look at a girl, and instantly you're in love with her. Doesn't it occur to you that it may be possible that I, from the distance of my thirty-five years, may look at this child of seventeen—or perhaps even less—and feel sorry for her, and desirous of helping her. Bah!—what do you know of romance?"
"I know this about it," said Mr. Tant, a little sullenly, "that if I go back to Miss Enid, and tell her that you take a deep interest in a very pretty girl of seventeen, who lives next door to you in a slum, and with whom you occasionally visit Fairyland, it is more than possible that the lady to whom you are supposed to be engaged——"
"I am not engaged to her," exclaimed Gilbert, almost savagely.