Presently, when the rain stopped, Mavis came away feeling mentally refreshed.  As is usual with those in trouble, she applied anything pertinent she read or heard about sorrow to herself.  The fact of her intercourse with Perigal having been in the nature of deadly sin did not trouble her so much as might have been expected.  She felt that God would understand, and believed that to know all was to forgive all.  Also, try as she might, she could not see that her sin was of such a deadly nature as it is made out to be by the Church.  It seemed that her surrender to her lover at Polperro had been the natural and inevitable consequence of her love for him, and that, if the one were condemned, so also should love be itself, inasmuch as it was plainly responsible for what had happened.  Now, she was glad to learn, on the authority of the pulpit, that, however much she suffered from her present extremity, it would be for her ultimate happiness.

She started afresh to look for a lodging.  She needed all the resolution she could muster.  Repulsive-looking foreign women opened most of the doors at which she knocked, whilst surly-looking men hovered in the background.

Mavis wished she had started earlier for Hammersmith, to see what she could find there.  At last she went into a chemist’s shop which she saw open, to ask if she could be recommended to any rooms.  A burly, blotchy-faced, bearded man stood behind the bottle-laden counter.  Mavis stated her wants.

“Married?” asked the man.

“Y—­yes—­but I’m living by myself for the present.”

“Of course.  But your husband would visit you,” remarked the man with a leer.

Mavis looked at him in surprise.

“Well, we’ll call it your husband,” suggested the chemist.

Mavis walked from the shop.

It seemed that everyone was in league to insult her.  Her heart was heavy with grief.  She could not help thinking how the presence of the loved one, a word of encouragement from him, would instantly dissipate her soreness of heart and growing physical exhaustion.

She gave up the idea of looking for rooms in this disreputable corner of London.  Her only concern was to get lodging for the night, so that she could resume her quest on the morrow in a more likely part of the great city.  She stopped a policeman and asked to be directed to a reasonable hotel.  The man told her that she would find what she wanted in the Euston Road.  She walked along this depressing and sordid thoroughfare, where what were once front gardens before comfortable houses were now waste spaces, given over to the display of dilapidated signboards of strange and unfamiliar trades.  Here she dragged herself up the steps of the hotels that abound in this road, to learn at each one she applied at that they were full for the night.  If she had not been so tired, she would have wondered if they were speaking the truth, or if they divined her condition and did