The woman was quite alone—­a still, dark figure sitting motionless by the grimy window.  She might have been carved in stone, so still she sat—­so still she had sat for more than two hours.

Her dress was black, of the poorest sort, frayed and worn, and she shivered under a threadbare shawl drawn close around her shoulders.  Yet, in spite of poverty and sickness, and despair and middle age, the woman was beautiful still, with a dark and haggard and wild sort of beauty that would have haunted one to one’s dying day.

In her youth, and her first freshness and innocence, she must have been lovely as a dream; but that loveliness was all gone now.

The listless hands lay still, the great, glittering dark eyes stared blankly at the dingy houses opposite, at the straggling pedestrians, at the thickening gloom.  The short February day was almost night now, the street-lamps flared yellow and dull athwart the clammy fog.

“Another day,” the woman murmured, “another endless day of sick despair gone.  Alone and dying—­the most miserable creature on the wide earth.  Oh, great God, who didst forgive Magdalene, have a little pity on me!”

A spasm of fierce anguish crossed her face for an instant, fading away, and leaving the hopeless despair more hopeless than before.

“I am mad, worse than mad, to hope as I do.  She will never look upon my guilty face—­she so pure, so stainless, so sweet—­how dare I ask it?  Oh, what happy women there are in the world!  Wives who love and are beloved, and are faithful to the end!  And I—­think how I drag on living with all that makes life worth having gone forever, while those happy ones, whose lives are one blissful dream, are torn by death from all who love them.  To think that I once had a husband, a child, a home; to think what I am now—­to think of it, and not to go mad!”

She laid her face against the cold glass with a miserable groan.  “Have pity on me, oh, Lord! and let me die!”

There was a rush of carriage-wheels without, a hansom cab whirled up to the door, and a tall young man leaped out.  Two minutes more and the tall young man burst impetuously into the dark room.

“All alone, Mrs. Denover,” called a cheery voice, “and all in the dark?  Darkness isn’t wholesome—­too conducive to low spirits and the blue devils.  Halloo!  Jane Anne, idol of my young affections, bring up the gas.”

He leaned over the greasy baluster, shouting into the invisible regions below, and was answered promptly enough by a grimy maid-servant with a flickering dip-candle.

“’Tain’t my fault, nor yet missis’s,” said this grimy maid.  “Mrs. Denover will sit in the dark, which I’ve——­”

“That will do, Jane Anne,” taking the dip and unceremoniously cutting her short.  “Vamoose! evaporate!  When I want you I’ll sing out.”

He re-entered the room and placed the candle on the table.  The woman had risen, and stood with both hands clasped over her heart, a wild, gleaming, eager light in her black eyes.  But she strove to restrain herself.