He had put his question out of curiosity, and he had not to wait for a reply.

It came frankly and instantly: "Why, I was at Al'mah's house in Bruton Street at eight o'clock this morning--with the milkman and the newsboy; and you wouldn't believe it, but I saw her, too.

She'd been up since six o'clock, she said.

Couldn't sleep for excitement and pain, but looking like a pansy blossom all the same, rigged out as pretty as could be in her boudoir, and a nurse doing the needful.

It's an odd dark kind of beauty she has, with those full lips and the heavy eyebrows.