that she had entered the secret breeding-quarter of the immense city, the obscene district where misery teemed and generated, and where the revolting fecundity of nature was proved amid surroundings of horror and despair.  And the hospital itself was the very centre, the innermost temple of all this ceaseless parturition.  In a corner of the hall, near a door, waited a small crowd of embossed women, young and middle-aged, sad, weary, unkempt, lightly dressed in shabby shapeless clothes, and sweltering in the summer heat; a few had babies in their arms.  In the doorway two neatly attired youngish women, either doctors or students, held an animated and interminable conversation, staring absent-mindedly at the attendant crowd.  A pale nurse came hurrying from the back of the hall and vanished through the doorway, squeezing herself between the doctors or students, who soon afterwards followed her, still talking; and then one by one the embossed women began to vanish through the doorway also.  The clock gently struck four, and Leonora, sighing, watched the hand creep to five minutes and to ten beyond the hour.  She gazed up the well of the staircases, and in imagination saw ward after ward, floor above floor of beds, on which lay repulsive and piteous creatures in fear, in pain, in exhaustion.  And she thought with dismay how many more poor immortal souls went out of that building than ever went into it.  ‘Rose is somewhere up there,’ she reflected.  At a quarter past four a stout white-haired lady briskly descended the stairs, and, after being accosted twice by officials, spoke to Leonora.

’You are Mrs. Stanway?  My name is Smithson.  I dare say your daughter has mentioned it in her letters.’  The famous dean of the hospital smiled, and paused while Leonora responded.  ‘Just at the moment,’ Miss Smithson continued, ’dear Rosalys is engaged, but I hope she will be down directly.  We are very, very busy.  Are you making a long stay in London, Mrs. Stanway?  The season is now in full swing, is it not?’

Leonora could find little to say to this experienced spinster, whom she unwillingly admired but with whom she was not in accord.  Miss Smithson uttered amiable banalities with an evident intention to do nothing more; her demeanour was preoccupied, and she made no further reference to Rose.  Soon a nurse respectfully called her; she hastened away full of apologies, leaving Leonora to meditate upon her own shortcomings as a serious person, and upon the futility of her existence of forty-one years.

Another quarter of an hour elapsed, and then Rose ran impetuously down the stone steps.

‘Mother, I’m so glad to see you!  Where’s Milly?’ she exclaimed eagerly, and they kissed twice.

As she answered the greeting Leonora noticed the lines of fatigue in Rose’s face, the brilliancy of her eyes, the emaciation of the body beneath her grey alpaca dress, and that air of false serenity masking hysteric excitement which she seemed to have noticed too in all the other officials—­the doctors or students, the nurses, and even the dean.