I remember wondering why I had not thought of pawning it during the week, when I had had so much need of money, and then being glad that I had not done so.

It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I first came to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the weather was warm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that, thinking only that it was my best and most attractive.

After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little swinging looking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time that my face was deadly pale, and that made me think of some bottles and cardboard boxes which lay in the pockets of my trunk.

I knew what they contained—­the remains of the cosmetics which I had bought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying to make my husband love me.  Never since then had I looked at them, but now I took them out (with a hare’s foot and some pads and brushes) and began to paint my pale face—­reddening my cracked and colourless lips and powdering out the dark rings under my eyes.

While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the deadened sound of the singing in the front street, with the young woman’s treble voice above the man’s bass and the wheezing of the accordion: 

     “Yes, we’ll gather, at the river,
       Where bright angel feet have trod,
     With its, crystal tide for ever
       Flowing by the throne of God.”

The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time, poor vessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that while I listened I laughed—­thinking what mockery was to sing of “angel feet” and “crystal tides” to those shivering wretches at the corner of the London street in the smoky night air.

“What a farce!” I thought.  “What a heartless farce!”

Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking out of my trunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn since I left Ellan, I began to pull them on.

I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing this, and trying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was suddenly smitten by a new thought.

I was about to commit suicide—­the worst kind of suicide, not the suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on earth after death!

After that night Mary O’Neill would no longer exist!  I should never he able to think of her again!  I should have killed her and buried her and stamped the earth down on her and she would be gone from me for ever!

That made a grip at my heart—­awakening memories of happy days in my childhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the short period of my great love, and even making me think of my life in Rome, with its confessions, its masses, and the sweetness of its church bells.

I was saying farewell to Mary O’Neill!  And parting with oneself seemed so terrible that when I thought of it my heart seemed ready to burst.