Chandler hesitated a moment awkwardly, then he went up to the man and said: 

“I’m very sorry this has happened.”

He held out his hand and the man, with an instinctive glance at his own to see if it was clean, shook it.

“Thank you, sir.”

Philip shook hands with him too.  Chandler told the midwife to come and fetch the certificate in the morning.  They left the house and walked along together in silence.

“It upsets one a bit at first, doesn’t it?” said Chandler at last.

“A bit,” answered Philip.

“If you like I’ll tell the porter not to bring you any more calls tonight.”

“I’m off duty at eight in the morning in any case.”

“How many cases have you had?”

“Sixty-three.”

“Good.  You’ll get your certificate then.”

They arrived at the hospital, and the S. O. C. went in to see if anyone wanted him.  Philip walked on.  It had been very hot all the day before, and even now in the early morning there was a balminess in the air.  The street was very still.  Philip did not feel inclined to go to bed.  It was the end of his work and he need not hurry.  He strolled along, glad of the fresh air and the silence; he thought that he would go on to the bridge and look at day break on the river.  A policeman at the corner bade him good-morning.  He knew who Philip was from his bag.

“Out late tonight, sir,” he said.

Philip nodded and passed.  He leaned against the parapet and looked towards the morning.  At that hour the great city was like a city of the dead.  The sky was cloudless, but the stars were dim at the approach of day; there was a light mist on the river, and the great buildings on the north side were like palaces in an enchanted island.  A group of barges was moored in midstream.  It was all of an unearthly violet, troubling somehow and awe-inspiring; but quickly everything grew pale, and cold, and gray.  Then the sun rose, a ray of yellow gold stole across the sky, and the sky was iridescent.  Philip could not get out of his eyes the dead girl lying on the bed, wan and white, and the boy who stood at the end of it like a stricken beast.  The bareness of the squalid room made the pain of it more poignant.  It was cruel that a stupid chance should have cut off her life when she was just entering upon it; but in the very moment of saying this to himself, Philip thought of the life which had been in store for her, the bearing of children, the dreary fight with poverty, the youth broken by toil and deprivation into a slatternly middle age—­he saw the pretty face grow thin and white, the hair grow scanty, the pretty hands, worn down brutally by work, become like the claws of an old animal—­then, when the man was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages he had to take; and the inevitable, abject penury of the end:  she might be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have saved her; in the end was the workhouse or subsistence on the charity of her children.  Who could pity her because she had died when life offered so little?