And I reeled down the pavement towards the Haymarket.  When I was some little distance from the carriage, I took to my heels and hurried as fast as possible towards the theatre, utterly regardless of the people.  I reached the spot breathless.  I stood for a moment staring wildly to right and left of me.  Not a trace of her was to be seen.  I heard a thin voice from my lips, that did not seem my own, ask a policeman, who was now patrolling the neighbourhood, if he had seen a basket-girl singing.

‘No,’ said the man, ’but I fancy you mean the Essex Street Beauty, don’t you?  I haven’t seen her for a long while now, but her dodge used to be to come here on rainy nights, and stand bare-headed and sing and sell just when the theatres was a-bustin’.  She gets a good lot, I fancy, by that dodge.’

‘The Essex Street Beauty?’

’Oh, I thought you know’d p’raps.  She’s a strornary pretty beggar-wench, with blue eyes and black hair, as used to stand at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, and the money as that gal got a-holdin’ out her matches and a-sayin’ texes out of the Bible must ha’ been strornary.  So the Essex Street Beauty’s bin about here agin on the rainy-night dodge, ’es she?  Well, it must have been the fust time for many a long day, for I’ve never seen her now for a long time.  She couldn’t ha’ stood about here for many minutes; if she had I must ha’ seen her.’

I staggered away from him, and passed and repassed the spot many times.  Then I extended my beat about the neighbouring streets, loitering at every corner where a basket-girl or a flower-girl might be likely to stand.  But no trace of her was to be seen.  Meantime the rain had ceased.

All the frightful stories that I had heard or read of the kidnapping of girls came pouring into my mind, till my blood boiled and my knees trembled.  Imagination was stinging me to life’s very core.  Every few minutes I would pass the theatre, and look towards the portico.

The night wore on, and I was unconscious how the time passed.  It was not till daybreak that I returned to my hotel, pale, weary, bent.

I threw myself upon my bed:  it scorched me.

I could not think.  At present I could only see—­see what?  At one moment a squalid attic, the starlight shining through patched window-panes upon a lonely mattress, on which a starving girl was lying; at another moment a cellar damp and dark, in one corner of which a youthful figure was crouching; and then (most intolerable of all!) a flaring gin-palace, where, among a noisy crowd, a face was looking wistfully on, while coarse and vulgar men were clustering with cruel, wolfish eyes around a beggar-girl.  This I saw and more—­a thousand things more.

It was insupportable.  I rose and again paced the street.

When I called upon my mother she asked me anxious questions as to what had ailed me the previous night.  Seeing, however, that I avoided replying to them, she left me after a while in peace.