“My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in London on your terms.  Before we accept such a child as yours we expect the parent to give us a legal undertaking that she relinquishes all rights in it until it is sixteen years of age.”

“Sixteen?  Isn’t that rather severe on a mother?” I said.

“Justly severe,” said the matron.  “Such women should be made to maintain their children, and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard.”

How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or what happened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on me, within and without), I do not know.  I only know that very late that night, as late as eleven o’clock, I was turning out of Park Lane into Piccadilly, where the poor “public women” with their painted faces, dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists, were promenading in front of the gentlemen’s clubs and smiling up at the windows.

These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I was suddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself thinking that among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might be some who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and who loved them.

This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringing laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of steps talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneath their overcoats showed that they were in evening dress.

Her laughter was not natural.  It had no joy in it, yet she laughed and laughed, and feeling as if I knew (because life had that day trampled on me also), I said to myself: 

“That woman’s heart is dead.”

This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a side glimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not fix.

“Where and when have I seen that woman’s face before?” I thought.

It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere.  But the woman’s resemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her joyless laughter, compelled me to stop at the next corner and look back.

By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O God, how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming arm-in-arm in my direction, with their silk hats tilted a little back, were saying: 

“Poor old Aggie!  She’s off!” “Completely off!” “Is it drink, I wonder?”

And then, seeing me, they said: 

“Gad, here’s a nice little gal, though!” “No rouge, neither!” “By Jove, no!  Her face is as white as a waterlily!”

Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were going to speak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with the woman, who was standing where they had left her, silent now, and looking after the men with fierce eyes under the fair hair that curled over her forehead.