There was an innocent barb in this girlish admiration, and it pierced the quick of all that was good in him.
"Good and kind and wise," he mused.

"If only the child knew! Heigh-ho! I am kind, sometimes I've been good, and often wise.

Well, I can't disillusion the child, happily; she has given me no address." He rose, wheeled his chair to a window facing the street, and opened it.

The cool fresh April air rushed in, clearing the room of its opalescent clouds, cleansing his brain of the fever that beset it.

He leaned with his elbows on the sill and, breathed noisily, gratefully.
Above, heaven had decked her broad bosom with her flickering stars, and from the million lamps of the great city rose and floated a tarnished yellow haze.