“One night, just as we were going to bed, there was a loud ring at the bell.  The footman answered the door—­and I heard my husband’s voice in the hall.  He had traced me, with the help of a man he knew in the police; and he had come to claim his rights.  I offered him all the little money I had, to let me be.  My good master spoke to him.  It was all useless.  He was obstinate and savage.  If—­instead of my running off from him—­it had been all the other way and he had run off from me, something might have been done (as I understood) to protect me.  But he stuck to his wife.  As long as I could make a farthing, he stuck to his wife.  Being married to him, I had no right to have left him; I was bound to go with my husband; there was no escape for me.  I bade them good-by.  And I have never forgotten their kindness to me from that day to this.

“My husband took me back to London.

“As long as the money lasted, the drinking went on.  When it was gone, I was beaten again.  Where was the remedy?  There was no remedy, but to try and escape him once more.  Why didn’t I have him locked up?  What was the good of having him locked up?  In a few weeks he would be out of prison; sober and penitent, and promising amendment—­and then when the fit took him, there he would be, the same furious savage that he had been often and often before.  My heart got hard under the hopelessness of it; and dark thoughts beset me, mostly at night.  About this time I began to say to myself, ’There’s no deliverance from this, but in death—­his death or mine.’

“Once or twice I went down to the bridges after dark and looked over at the river.  No.  I wasn’t the sort of woman who ends her own wretchedness in that way.  Your blood must be in a fever, and your head in a flame—­at least I fancy so—­you must be hurried into it, like, to go and make away with yourself.  My troubles never took that effect on me.  I always turned cold under them instead of hot.  Bad for me, I dare say; but what you are—­you are.  Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

“I got away from him once more, and found good employment once more.  It don’t matter how, and it don’t matter where.  My story is always the same thing, over and over again.  Best get to the end.

“There was one change, however, this time.  My employment was not in a private family.  I was also allowed to teach cookery to young women, in my leisure hours.  What with this, and what with a longer time passing on the present occasion before my husband found me out, I was as comfortably off as in my position I could hope to be.  When my work was done, I went away at night to sleep in a lodging of my own.  It was only a bedroom; and I furnished it myself—­partly for the sake of economy (the rent being not half as much as for a furnished room); and partly for the sake of cleanliness.  Through all my troubles I always liked things neat about me—­neat and shapely and good.