He was persuaded, he knew not how; he never meant to be. The something which was in him, the craving for food which was life, was on her side; he did have tea with her, a gargantuan tea. He ate of everything there was to eat, while she showed that the necessity that she should have something to eat of which she had spoken was a fiction, by trifling with odds and ends, while she watched that his plate was kept well supplied, and kept on talking. She was even autobiographical.

"Compared with what I have gone through, with my course of training in life's hard school, what you've endured is nothing, and you see that outwardly I'm none the worse for it. I used to think that there wasn't such a thing in the world as laughter for me, that it was just as improbable that I should have a good time as that I should jump over the moon. Yet, I've learnt to laugh at times, nearly all the time; and as for a good time, I've acquired the knack even of getting that. It will be the same with you, and more."

"I doubt it."

"Of course, all green hands do; they take life too seriously."

"Do they? When you left me I don't remember; when I remembered anything again I was in the workhouse infirmary. I'd been found senseless and practically stripped in an alley off the Gray's Inn Road. I'd been in the infirmary more than a week before I came to my senses, after a fashion; then they wanted me to account for myself. I couldn't, or I wouldn't, they were not sure which, so they put me out again into the street. I'm not certain, but I fancy that they gave me the choice of that or of being an able-bodied pauper. It was snowing on the day they turned me out; you should have seen the clothes I was wearing, and the boots!"

"I know the Christian charity of the parish and of the workhouse master!"

"It's rather more than two months ago, and since then I've never had a square meal nor a comfortable night's lodging. You know what kind of weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have, men, women, and children; I've herded with them. What a world! And for what I've suffered I have to thank you."

"That's not true."

"That's a lie. I'm eating your food--I can't help eating it, I've got to that--but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I will."

"You talk nonsense; would you rather I had let you go to gaol?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have you forgotten that when I first had the honour of meeting you I saved you from the police? I came on the scene in the very nick of time. In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched you to the station."

He laid down his knife and fork.

"So I was right."

"About what?"

"It's all been a haze; something must have happened to me, something must have cracked in here." He laid his hand on his head. "I don't seem to remember anything beyond a certain point. I don't remember how it was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me to enable you to bring off some swindle--what it was I've never understood--and that then you left me in the street, as if I were carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get into your house I have never been able to make out."

"I have upstairs the watch, chain and purse of which you relieved an old gentleman in Hyde Park, just before I came upon the scene. There's his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner--I know all about him--and you'll be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than anything you've had to bear because of me."

"Is that true, that I did what you say?"

"Perfectly, honestly; do you mean to say that you can't remember?"

"Now that you speak of it I do seem to recall something; it's coming back."

"I should think that it probably was; it will all of it come back if you give it time. I know all about you. I know your name, your record, the whole dirty story; you were as deep in the gutter when I first met you as you are now, and perhaps deeper--certainly you had no more chance of getting out of it; men with your record never do, I know."

"What's my name?"

"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know?"

"Not--not clearly; sometimes I nearly know, it's on the tip of my tongue, I can see it written, somewhere; but the writing is not plain--I can't quite make it out."

"What do you call yourself?"

"They call me 'Balmy."'

"Who's they?"

"Oh, some of them; some of the swine with whom I herd. I didn't know what 'balmy' meant before they told me; it seems that it means a man who's not right in his head--not quite mad, but very nearly. I don't think I'm mad, or even nearly, but, looking back, I can't get beyond a certain point--beyond you. What did you do to me that caused it? Can't you undo it?"

"Personally, I did nothing. There was somebody else there besides me; can't you remember him?"

"I do seem to remember someone; wasn't it a man?" She nodded. "I do seem to remember a man, a black-faced man. I suppose he was your tool, and what he did to me was done by your orders."

"He certainly was not my tool. You say they tell you that you're not in your right mind; you were not when I first met you. I should say that you were practically starving and had been living the life of a London gutter man; that bolt from the police finished you; we had to do something to get life back into you. You certainly had your senses no more about you than you say you had in the workhouse infirmary. I declare to you that when I left you you were in a much better condition than when I met you. You had your senses more about you; you had been well fed, I believe the food I gave you saved your life; you were well dressed, you had money in your pocket. I don't see how I can fairly be held responsible for what happened to you afterwards; if you were in your right mind now, you'd see I can't."

"I don't know how much of what you're telling me is true. What do you want with me now? Why have you brought me here, do you want to use me as a catspaw again?"

"Let me tell you my story, and then you'll begin to understand. Do you mind if I have a cigarette? I can always talk better when I am smoking. And won't you have a cigar?"

"I had a cigar when I saw you last."

"You remember that? Have another now that we meet again. You'll find that there's nothing the matter with those cigars, they're good tobacco."

She placed a box of cigars in front of him. He glared at them as if he would rather they had not been there, but the craving that was in him got the upper hand again. He took and lighted one, puffing at it while she talked.

"My father was a country schoolmaster; I don't remember my mother, but my father died when I was, I suppose, about fourteen. My only relative, an uncle, found me a situation in a draper's shop, where I got no pay because I was so young, but where they worked me from the first thing in the morning till the last thing at night, and gave me in return my food and lodging--such lodging and such food. When I had been there three years they turned me out because I objected to the attentions of the master's son. I knew my uncle wouldn't have me; I'd known that all along. I should have been without a penny, absolutely, if it hadn't been for one of the assistants who lent me a sovereign. With that I came to town--I had ever an adventurous spirit. I went to a big shop, a famous shop; they took me on at once. A sale was coming on, they were in want of extra hands; with people of that sort they didn't want references; the assistants there never had a chance of being dishonest, they were too well looked after. They wanted no character when you came, and they gave you none when you left; you were liable to be discharged at a moment's notice, without any cause being given, and assistants were being discharged like that continually, and they gave you no character though you had been there ten years; they never do give characters, it's a rule of the house. I was there rather more than two years. I was in the mantles when I left. One afternoon just as I was going down for tea, they called me into the office, gave me my wages, and told me I could go; trade was slack, the season was over; they gave me no reason, but that was the only one I could guess that they had for sacking me."

She stopped to knock the ash off her cigarette, smiling to herself as she did so.

"I got another berth after--well, after experiences something like those which you have lately had; I was looking a nice sort of drab by the time I got it. It was in a shop which did a cutting trade, a low-class shop, an open-to-all-hours-of-the-night sort of shop, in a low-class neighbourhood in which people did not start buying till an hour when the shops ought to be closed. What a life I had there! You talk about what you've been doing, and you're a man."

Her thoughts seemed to be harking back, but she still smiled.

"I've seen columns of gush in the papers about the woes of shop assistants; if the British public only knew--if every woman had to serve a term as assistant in some of the shops I could tell them of, things would be altered pretty quick."

She leaned towards him over the table.

"You say you'd like to wring my neck; if you only knew the number of people there were in that shop to whom I would have given almost anything for the chance of wringing theirs--I almost did wring one woman's, who was, ironically, called a housekeeper, and who was an unspeakable thing! You talk of the swine with whom you've herded; you've never had to associate with the likes of her, and be under her thumb--and that's why I left."

Restlessness seemed all at once to seize her. She rose from her seat and stood in front of the fire.

"I did some more starving, and--that sort of thing, then I got another berth, no better than the other. They said my accounts were wrong--they couldn't prove it, and I don't believe they were, but they sent me packing that very day. You've no notion for how little, for nothing at all, a draper's assistant, who may have given months and years good service, is thrown into the ditch, no reason vouchsafed, no remedy obtainable, no character to be had."

She swept out her hands, as if she were brushing from her a flood of memories.

"Oh, I had all sorts of experiences; I was in the place you mentioned for years, although I'm not an old woman now; you see, I got there first when I was so very young; that does make a difference. Oh, I saw the drapery in all its phases; to this hour I can't enter a draper's shop without feeling a chill at the bottom of my spinal column; my skin goes all goose-fleshy; I think of what drapers' shops once meant to me. But there came a time when I had done with them--I'll take care that it's for ever; that was when I reached the very lowest circle in the pit. How many circles were there in Dante's hell? I'm convinced I reached the bottom one."