But it was about the same as the other in size and furniture, and after I had decorated it with my few treasures—­the Reverend Mother’s rosary, which I hung on the head of the bed, and my darling mother’s miniature, which I pinned up over the fire—­I thought it looked bright and homelike.

All this time, too, I was between the nether and the upper mill-stone.

My employer, the Jew (though he must have seen that I was sweating myself much more than the law would have allowed him to sweat me), could not forgive himself when he found that I was earning more by “piece” than he would have had to pay me by the day, or resist the temptation to square accounts with me at the earliest possible opportunity.

Unfortunately, his opportunity came only too quickly, and it led (however indirectly) to the most startling fact that has ever, perhaps, entered into a woman’s life.

I had not been more than three months at the Jew’s house when the Jewish festivals came round—­New Year’s Day, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles—­which, falling near together and occupying many days, disturbed his own habits of work entirely.

One of the tasks he reserved for himself was that of taking the best paid of his “best-bespoke” back to the large shops in the West End, and waiting for the return orders.  But finding that the festivals interfered with these journeys, he decided that they should be made by me, who was supposed to know the West End (having lived in it) and to present a respectable appearance.

I was reluctant to undertake the new duty, for though the Jew was to pay me a few shillings a week for it, I saw I could earn more in the time with my needle.  But when he laid his long, hairy forefinger on the side of his nose and said with a significant smile: 

“You vill be gradeful, and convenience your employer, mine child,” I agreed.

Thus it came to pass that not only during the Jewish festivals, but for months after they were over, I carried a rather large black bag by tram or rail to the district that lies at the back of Piccadilly and along Oxford Street as far west as the Marble Arch.

I had to go whenever called upon and to wait as long as wanted, so that in the height of the tailoring season I was out in the West End at all irregular hours of night, and even returned to my lodgings on one or two occasions in the raw sunshine of the early mornings.

The one terror of my West End journeys was that I might meet Sister Mildred.  I never did.  In the multitude of faces which passed through the streets, flashing and disappearing like waves under the moon at sea, I never once caught a glimpse of a face I knew.

But what sights I saw for all that!  What piercing, piteous proofs that between the rich and the poor there is a great gulf fixed!

The splendid carriages driving in and out of the Park; the sumptuously dressed ladies strolling through Bond Street; the fashionable church paraders; the white plumes and diamond stars which sometimes gleamed behind the glow of the electric broughams gliding down the Mall.