Then I heard no more; for at the intolerable picture called up by the woman’s words, my soul in its misery seemed to have soared, scared and trembling, above and beyond the heavens at whose futile gates it had been moaning, till at last it sank at the feet of the mighty power that my love had striven with on the sands of Raxton when the tide was coming in—­some pale and cruel ruler whose brow I saw wrinkled with the woman’s mocking smile—­some frightful columbine-queen, wicked, bowelless, and blind, shaking a starry cap and bells, and chanting—­

I lent the drink of Day
To gods for feast;
I poured the river of Night
On gods surceased: 
Their blood was Nin-ki-gal’s.

And there, at the feet of the awful jesting hag, Circumstance, I could only cry ‘Winnie! my poor Winnie!’ while over my head seemed to pass Necessity and her black ages of despair.

When I came to myself I said to the woman,

‘You can point out the grave?’

‘Well, yes,’ paid slip, turning round sharply; ’but may I ax who the dickens you are?—­an’ what makes you so cut up about a pore woman’s darter?  It’s right-on beautiful to see how kind gentlemen is nowadays’:  and she turned and tried, stumbling, to lead the way downstairs.

As we left the room I turned round to look at it.  The picture of the mattress, now nearly hidden in the shadows—­the picture of the other furniture in the room—­two chairs—­or rather one and a part of a chair, for the rails of the hack were gone—­a table, a large brown jug, the handle of which had been replaced by a piece of string, and a white washhand-basin, with most of the rim broken away, and a shallow tub apparently used for a bath—­seemed to sink into my flesh as though bitten in by the etcher’s aquafortis.  Winifred’s sleeping-room!

‘Of course she wasn’t her daughter,’ said Wilderspin meditatively, as we stood on the stairs.

’Not my darter!  Why, in course she was.  What an imperent thing to say, sure_lie_!’

‘There is one thing I wish to say to you,’ said he to the woman.  ’When I agreed with you as to the sum to be paid for the model’s sittings, it was clearly understood that she was to sit to no other artist, and that the match-selling was to cease.

’Well, and ‘ave I broke my word?’

‘A person has heard her singing and seen her selling baskets,’ I said.

‘The person tells a lie,’ said the woman, with a dogged and sullen look, and in a voice that grew thicker with every word.  ’Ain’t there sich things as doubles?’

At these last words my heart gave a sudden leap.  We left the house, and neither of us spoke till we got into the Strand.

‘Did you see the—­body at all?’ I asked Wilderspin.

’Oh, yes.  After I gave her the money for the funeral I went to Primrose Court.  The woman took me upstairs, and there on the mattress lay—­what the poor woman believed to be the earthly body of an earthly daughter.  It was covered with a quilt.  Over the face a ragged shawl had been thrown.’