The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill

Of all houses in London this, I thought, was the least suitable to me.

Looking down the table I told myself that it must be the very home of idle gossip and the hot-bed of tittle-tattle.

I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house a day when I realised that my fellow-guests were the most reserved and self-centred of all possible people.

One old gentleman who wore a heavy moustache, and had been a colonel in the Indian army, was understood to be a student of Biblical prophecy, having collected some thousands of texts which established the identity of the British nation with the lost tribes of Israel.

Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had taken orders without securing a living, was believed to be writing a history of the world and (after forty years of continuous labour) to have reached the century before Christ.

An elderly lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic actress who was studying in secret for a season at the National Theatre.

Such, and of such kind, were my house-mates; and I have since been told that every great city has many such groups of people, the great prophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great actors whom the world does not know—the odds and ends of humanity, thrown aside by the rushing river of life into the gulley-ways that line its banks, the odd brothers, the odd sisters, the odd uncles, the odd aunts, for whom there is no place in the family, in society, or in the business of the world.

It was all very curious and pathetic, yet I think I should have been safe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of London into which chance had so strangely thrown me, but for one unfortunate happening.

That was the arrival of the daily newspaper.

There was never more than a single copy. It came at eight in the morning and was laid on the dining-room mantelpiece, from which (by an unwritten law of the house) it was the duty as well as the honour of the person who had first finished breakfast to take it up and read the most startling part of the news to the rest of the company.

Thus it occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I was startled by the voice of the old colonel, who, standing back to the fire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried:

"Mysterious Disappearance of a Peeress."

"Read it," said the old clergyman.

The tea-cup which I was raising to my mouth trembled in my hand, and when I set it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what was coming, and it came.

The old colonel read:

"A telegram from Blackwater announces the mysterious disappearance of the young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have taken place late on Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning.

"It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a little more than a year ago, and her disappearance is the more unaccountable from the fact that during the past month she has been actively occupied in preparing for a fête in honour of her return home after a long and happy honeymoon.

"The pavilion in which the fête was to have been held had been erected on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea, and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going out on Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way in the darkness and fell over the cliffs.

"The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally known in Ellan until the guests had begun to arrive for the reception on Friday evening, when the large assembly broke up in great confusion.

"Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief-stricken husband."

After the colonel had finished reading I had an almost irresistible impulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my house-mates looked into my face they must see that I was the person indicated.

They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations ("Most mysterious!" "What can have become of her?" "On the eve of her fête too!") they began to discuss disappearances in general, each illustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own study.

"Perfectly extraordinary how people disappear nowadays," said one.

"Extraordinary, sir?" said the old colonel, looking over his spectacles, "why should it be extraordinary that one person should disappear when whole nations—the ten tribes for example. . . ."

"But that's a different thing altogether," said the old clergyman. "Now if you had quoted Biblical examples—Elisha or perhaps Jonah. . . ."

After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way I rose from the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the room.

It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed—how newspaper correspondents were sent from London to Ellan to inquire into the circumstances of my disappearance; how the theory of accident gave place to the theory of suicide, and the theory of suicide to the theory of flight; how a porter on the pier at Blackwater said he had carried my trunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight, thinking I was a maid from the great house until I had given him half-a-crown (his proper fee being threepence); how two female passengers had declared that a person answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool; how these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing; and how, finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my disappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped from mid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea.

But then came another development.

My father, who was reported to have received the news of my departure in a way that suggested he had lost control of his senses (raging and storming at my husband like a man demented), having come to the conclusion that I, being in a physical condition peculiar to women, had received a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory, offered five hundred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery, which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart-broken family but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title and inheritance.

With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal appearance.

"Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black hair; lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression; unusually sunny smile."

It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heard these reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Even the nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated clatter of my knife and fork made me wonder that my house-mates did not realise the truth, which must I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes.

They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories. But all the same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house in Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my great agitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to cry. "Stop, stop, don't you see it is I?"

That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what legal powers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the terror that sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of a public quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning the legitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which that would bring not only upon me but upon Martin.

I had some reason for this fear.

After my father's offer of a reward there came various spiteful paragraphs (inspired, as I thought, by Alma and written by the clumsier hand of my husband) saying it was reported in Ellan that, if my disappearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight, the only "shock" I could have experienced must be a shock of conscience, rumour having for some time associated my name with that of a person who was not unknown in connection with Antarctic exploration.

It was terrible.

Day by day the motive of my disappearance became the sole topic of conversation in our boarding-house. I think the landlady must have provided an evening as well as a morning paper, for at tea in the drawing-room upstairs the most recent reports were always being discussed.

After a while I realised that not only my house-mates but all London was discussing my disappearance.

It was a rule of our boarding-house that during certain hours of the day everybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and having nothing else to do I used to walk up and down the streets. In doing so I was compelled to pass certain newsvendors' stalls, and I saw for several days that nearly every placard had something about "the missing peeress."

When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with a sense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman has when she is going down a dark corridor at night—that noiseless footsteps are coming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder.

But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in our boarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She said nothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read that cruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking aslant at me.

One afternoon, her sister, the milliner, came to see me according to her promise, and though she, too, said nothing, I saw that, while the old colonel and the old clergyman were disputing on the hearthrug about some disappearance which occurred thousands of years ago, she was looking fixedly at the fingers with which, in my nervousness, I was ruckling up the discoloured chintz of my chair.

Then in a moment—I don't know why—it flashed upon me that my travelling companion was in correspondence with my father.

That idea became so insistent towards dinner-time that I made pretence of being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to my room, where the cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of vinegar and laid them on my forehead to relieve my headache—though she increased it, poor thing, by talking perpetually.

Next morning the landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed from my name, I was Irish and a Catholic, I might like to receive a visit from a Sister of Mercy who called at the house at intervals to attend to the sick.

I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but feeling that my identity was suspected I dared not give cause for further suspicion, so I compelled myself to agree.

A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing with my back to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to face an attack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a gentle hand knocked at my door.

"Come in," I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of a swinging bough.

And then an astonishing thing happened.

A young woman stepped quietly into the room and closed the door behind her. She was wearing the black and white habit of the Little Sisters of the Poor, but I knew her long, pale, plain-featured face in an instant.

A flood of shame, and at the same time a flood of joy swept over me at the sight of her.

It was Mildred Bankes.

"Mary," said Mildred, "speak low and tell me everything."

She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands in both of mine, and told her.

I told her that I had fled from my husband's house because I could not bear to remain there any longer.

I told her that my father had married me against my will, in spite of my protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I had any right to resist him.

I told her that my father—God forgive me if I did him a wrong—did not love me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to his lust of power, and that if he were searching for me now it was only because my absence disturbed his plans and hurt his pride.

I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he had married me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and secure an income.

I told her, too, that not only did my husband not love me, but he loved somebody else, that he had been cruel and brutal to me, and therefore (for these and other reasons) I could not return to him under any circumstances.

While I was speaking I felt Mildred's hand twitching between mine, and when I had finished she said:

"But, my dear child, they told me your friends were broken-hearted about you; that you had lost your memory and perhaps your reason, and therefore it would be a good act to help them to send you home."

"It's not true, it's not true," I said.

And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told me how she came to be there—that the woman who had travelled with me in the train from Liverpool, seeing my father's offer of a reward, had written to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebody to establish my identity; that my father wished to come to London for this purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parish priest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead, but had been prohibited by his Bishop; and finally that my father had written to his lawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had been together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work now to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people.

"And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs," she said in a whisper, "and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that they may apply for an order to send you home."

This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to Mildred to save me.

"Oh, Mildred, save me, save me," I cried.

"But how can I? how can I?" she asked.

I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more deeply I told her the rest of my story.

I told her that if I had fled from my husband's house it was not merely because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I, too, loved somebody else—somebody who was far away but was coming back, and there was nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain or suffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me from every danger, and we should love each other eternally.

If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that this was the wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had said it all in a rush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed on me as if they were about to start from their sockets.

"But, my dear, dear child," she said, "this is worse and worse. Your father and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done wrong too. Don't you see you have?"

I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and did not believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I had been forced to make. But when she was about to rise, saying that after all it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to join my life to his—whoever he was—who had led me to forget my duty as a wife, I held her trembling hands and whispered:

"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet."

"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I was going to say.

"Mildred," I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not merely because I loved somebody else, but because. . . ."

I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women like Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of reading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.

"Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"Does your husband know?"

"Yes."

"And your father?"

"No."

Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneath her breath:

"Oh Mother of my God!"

I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while I said:

"Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will you not?"

There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in her chair as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said:

"It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will come up soon to know if you are the Mary O'Neill whom I knew at the Sacred Heart, and what am I to say to them?"

"Say no," I cried. "Why shouldn't you? They'll never know anything to the contrary. Nobody will know."

"Nobody?"

I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried to excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.

"It is Alma," I said.

"Alma? Alma Lier?"

"Yes."

And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she had tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, who was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place.

And then I spoke of Martin again—I could not help it—saying that the shame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me than anything else that could befall me in this world.

"If you only knew who he is," I said, "and the honour he is held in, you would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that any disgrace should fall on him through me."

I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I did not intend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of my great love I could not help doing so.

"You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred—the very first. Don't you remember the morning after I arrived at school? They had torn me away from my mother, and I was so little and lonely, but you were so sweet and kind. You took me into church for my first visitation, and then into the garden for my first rosary—don't you remember it?"

Mildred had closed her eyes. Her face was becoming very white.

"And then don't you remember the day the news came that my mother was very ill, and I was to go home? You came to see me off at the station, and don't you remember what you said when we were sitting in the train? You said we might never meet again, because our circumstances would be so different. You didn't think we should meet like this, did you?"

Mildred's face was growing deadly white.

"My darling mother died. She was all I had in the world and I was all she had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in my father's house, so I was sent back to school. But the Reverend Mother was very kind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to become a nun. Yes indeed, and never so much as on the day you took your vows."

Mildred's eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were fluttering and she was breathing audibly.

"How well I remember it! The sweet summer morning and the snow-white sunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of the Little Sisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white gown and long white veil. I cried all through the ceremony. And if my father had not come for me then, perhaps I should have been a nun like you now."

Mildred's lips were moving. I was sure she was praying to our Lady for strength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me plead the harder.

"But God knows best what our hearts are made for," I said. "He knows that mine was made for love. And though you may not think it I know God knows that he who is away is my real husband—not the one they married me to. You will not separate us, will you? All our happiness—his and mine—is in your hands. You will save us, will you not?"

Some time passed before Mildred spoke. It may have been only a few moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know then that Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me. At length she said:

"Mary, you don't know what you are asking me to do. When I took my vows I promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no matter what the consequences, as surely as I should answer to God at the great Day of Judgment. Yet you wish me to lie. How can I? How can I? Remember my vows, my duty."

I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all my life. When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would save me, one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the men downstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the bitterest reproaches.

"You religious women are always talking about your duty," I cried. "You never think about love. Love is kind and merciful; but no, duty, always duty! Love indeed! What do you cold creatures out of the convent, with your crosses and rosaries, know about love—real love—the blazing fire in a woman's heart when she loves somebody so much that she would give her heart's blood for him—yes, and her soul itself if need be."

What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I was doing until I found myself looking out of the window and panting for breath.

Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my reproaches, and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still sitting in my chair with both her hands covering her face and the tears trickling through her fingers on to the linen of her habit.

That conquered me in a moment.

I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her. I dared not do that, now, but I knelt by her side again and asked her to forgive me.

"Forgive me, sister," I said. "I see now that God has brought us to this pass and there is no way out of it. You must do what you think is right. I shall always know you couldn't have done otherwise. He will know too. And if it must be that disgrace is to fall on him through me . . . and that when he comes home he will find. . . ."

But I could not bear to speak about that, so I dropped my head on Mildred's lap.

During the silence that followed we heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

"Listen! They're here," said Mildred. "Get up. Say nothing. Leave everything to me."

I rose quickly and returned to the window. Mildred dried her eyes, got up from the chair and stood with her back to the fire-place.

There was a knock at my door. I do not know which of us answered it, but my landlady came into the room, followed by three men in tall silk hats.

"Excuse us, my dear," she said, in an insincere voice. "These gentlemen are making an examination of the house, and they wish to see your room. May they?"

I do not think I made any reply. I was holding my breath and watching intently. The men made a pretence of glancing round, but I could see they were looking at Mildred. Their looks seemed to say as plainly as words could speak:

"Is it she?"

Mildred hesitated for a moment, there was a dreadful silence and then—may the holy Virgin bless her!—she shook her head.

I could bear no more. I turned back to the window. The men, who had looked at each other with expressions of surprise, tried to talk together in ordinary tones as if on common place subjects.

"So there's nothing to do here, apparently."

"Apparently not."

"Let's go, then. Good day, Sister. Sorry to have troubled you."

I heard the door close behind them. I heard their low voices as they passed along the corridor. I heard their slow footsteps as they went down the stairs. And then, feeling as if my heart would burst, I turned to throw myself at Sister Mildred's feet.

But Sister Mildred was on her knees, with her face buried in my bed, praying fervently.

I did not know then, and it seems unnecessary to say now, why my father gave up the search for me in London. He did so, and from the day the milliner's clue failed him I moved about freely.

Then from the sense of being watched I passed into that of being lost.

Sister Mildred was my only friend in London, but she was practically cut off from me. The Little Sisters had fixed her up (in the interests of her work among the lost ones) in a tiny flat at the top of a lofty building near Piccadilly, where her lighted window always reminded me of a lighthouse on the edge of a dangerous reef. But in giving me her address she warned me not to come to her except in case of urgent need partly because further intercourse might discredit her denial, and partly because it would not be good for me to be called "one of Sister Veronica's girls"—that being Mildred's name as a nun.

Oh the awful loneliness of London!

Others just as friendless have wandered in the streets of the big city. I knew I was not the first, and I am sure I have not been the last to find London the most solitary place in the world. But I really and truly think there was one day of the week when, from causes peculiar to my situation, my loneliness must have been deeper than that of the most friendless refugee.

Nearly every boarder in our boarding-house used to receive once a week or once a month a letter containing a remittance from some unknown source, with which he paid his landlady and discharged his other obligations.

I had no such letter to receive, so to keep up the character I had not made but allowed myself to maintain (of being a commander's wife) I used to go out once a week under pretence of calling at a shipping office to draw part of my husband's pay.

In my childish ignorance of the habits of business people I selected Saturday afternoon for this purpose; and in my fear of encountering my husband, or my husband's friends in the West End streets, I chose the less conspicuous thoroughfares at the other side of the river.

Oh, the wearisome walks I had on Saturday afternoons, wet or dry, down the Seven Dials, across Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall, round the eastern end of the Houses of Parliament, and past Westminster Pier (dear to me from one poignant memory), and so on and on into the monotonous and inconspicuous streets beyond.

Towards nightfall I would return, generally by the footway across Hungerford Bridge, which is thereby associated with the most painful moments of my life, for nowhere else did I feel quite so helpless and so lonely.

The trains out of Charing Cross shrieking past me, the dark river flowing beneath, the steamers whistling under the bridge, the automobiles tooting along the Embankment, the clanging of the electric cars, the arc lamps burning over the hotels and the open flares blazing over the theatres—all the never-resting life of London—and myself in the midst of the tumultuous solitude, a friendless and homeless girl.

But God in His mercy saved me from all that—saved me too, in ways in which it was only possible to save a woman.

The first way was through my vanity.

Glancing at myself in my mottled mirror one morning I was shocked to see that what with my loneliness and my weary walks I was losing my looks, for my cheeks were hollow, my nose was pinched, my eyes were heavy with dark rings underneath them, and I was plainer than Martin had ever seen me.

This frightened me.

It would be ridiculous to tell all the foolish things I did after that to improve and preserve my appearance for Martin's sake, because every girl whose sweetheart is away knows quite well, and it is not important that anybody else should.

There was a florist's shop in Southampton Row, and I went there every morning for a little flower which I wore in the breast of my bodice, making believe to myself that Martin had given it to me.

There was a jeweller's shop there too, and I sold my wedding ring (having long felt as if it burnt my finger) and bought another wedding ring with an inscription on the inside "From Martin to Mary."

As a result of all this caressing of myself I saw after a while, to my great joy, that my good looks were coming back; and it would be silly to say what a thrill of delight I had when, going into the drawing-room of our boarding-house one day, the old actress called me "Beauty" instead of the name I had hitherto been known by.

The second way in which God saved me from my loneliness was through my condition.

I did not yet know what angel was whispering to me out of the physical phase I was passing through, when suddenly I became possessed by a passion for children.

It was just as if a whole new world of humanity sprang into life for me by magic. When I went out for my walks in the streets I ceased to be conscious of the faces of men and women, and it seemed as if London were peopled by children only.

I saw no more of the crowds going their different ways like ants on an ant-hill, but I could not let a perambulator pass without peering under the lace of the hood at the little cherub face whose angel eyes looked up at me.

There was an asylum for children suffering from incurable diseases in the smaller square beside our boarding-house, and every morning after breakfast, no matter how cold the day might be, I would open my window to hear the cheerful voices of the suffering darlings singing their hymn:

"There's a Friend for little children,
Above the bright blue sky."

Thus six weeks passed, Christmas approached, and the sad old city began to look glad and young and gay.

Since a certain night at Castle Raa I had had a vague feeling that I had thrown myself out of the pale of the Church, therefore I had never gone to service since I came to London, and had almost forgotten that confession and the mass used to be sweet to me.

But going home one evening in the deepening London fog (for the weather had begun to be frosty) I saw, through the open doors of a Catholic church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from a little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a black-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make them behave.

This brought back the memory of Rome and of Sister Angela. But it also made me think of Martin, and remember his speech at the public dinner, about saying the prayers for the day with his comrades, that they might feel that they were not cut off from the company of Christian men.

So telling myself he must be back by this time on that lonely plateau that guards the Pole, I resolved (without thinking of the difference of time) to go to mass on Christmas morning, in order to be doing the same thing as Martin at the same moment.

With this in my mind I returned to our boarding-house and found Christmas there too, for on looking into the drawing-room on my way upstairs I saw the old actress, standing on a chair, hanging holly which the old colonel with old-fashioned courtesy was handing up to her.

They were cackling away like two old hens when they caught sight of me, whereupon the old actress cried:

"Ah, here's Beauty!"

Then she asked me if I would like a ticket for a dress rehearsal on Christmas Eve of a Christmas pantomime.

"The audience will be chiefly children out of the lanes and alleys round about, but perhaps you won't mind that," she said.

I told her I should be overjoyed, and at two o'clock the following afternoon I was in my seat at the corner of the dress-circle of the great theatre, from which I could see both the stage and the auditorium.

The vast place was packed with children from ceiling to floor, and I could see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had put the girls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the tousled heads of the boys.

How their eager faces glistened! How sad they looked when the wicked sisters left Cinderella alone in the kitchen! How bright when the glittering fairy godmother came to visit her! How their little dangling feet clapped together with joy when the pretty maid went off to the ball behind six little ponies which pranced along under the magical moonlight in the falling snow!

But the part of the performance which they liked best was their own part when, in the interval, the band struck up one of the songs they sang in their lanes and alleys:

"Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips yew see."

That was so loaded with the memory of one of the happiest days of my life (the day I went with Martin to see the Scotia) that, in the yearning of the motherhood still unborn in me, I felt as if I should like to gather the whole screaming houseful of happy children to my breast.

But oh why, why, why, does not Providence warn us when we are on the edge of tragic things?

The pantomime rehearsal being over I was hurrying home (for the evening was cold, though I was so warm within) when I became aware of a number of newsmen who were flying up from the direction of the Strand, crying their papers at the top of their voice.

I did not usually listen to such people, but I was compelled to do so now, for they were all around me.

"Paper—third e'shen—loss of the Sco-sha."

The cry fell on me like a thunderbolt. An indescribable terror seized me. I felt paralysed and stood dead still. People were buying copies of the papers, and at first I made a feeble effort to do the same. But my voice was faint; the newsman did not hear me and he went flying past.

"Paper—third e'shen—reported loss of the Sco-sha."

After that I dared not ask for a paper. Literally I dared not. I dared not know the truth. I dared not see the dreadful fact in print.

So I began to hurry home. But as I passed through the streets, stunned, stupefied, perspiring, feeling as if I were running away from some malignant curse, the newsmen seemed to be pursuing me, for they were darting out from every street.

"Paper—third e'shen—loss of the Sco-sha."

Faster and faster I hurried along. But the awful cry was always ringing in my ears, behind, before, and on either side.

When I reached our boarding-house my limbs could scarcely support me. I had hardly strength enough to pull the bell. And before our young waiter had opened the door two news men, crossing the square, were crying:

"Paper—third edition—reported loss of the 'Scotia.'"

As I passed through the hall the old colonel and the old clergyman were standing by the dining-room door. They were talking excitedly, and while I was going upstairs, panting hard and holding on by the handrail, I heard part of their conversation.

"Scotia was the name of the South Pole ship, wasn't it?"

"Certainly it was. We must send young John out for a paper."

Reaching my room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so failed me that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brain recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling as a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar.

After a while I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor below. Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them say, in such a casual tone:

"Rather sad—this South Pole business, isn't it?"

"Yes, if it's true."

"Doesn't seem much doubt about that—unless there are two ships of the same name, you know."

At that my heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just then the gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me to go down to tea.

As I entered the drawing-room the old colonel was unfolding a newspaper.

"Here we are," he was saying. "Reported loss of the Scotia—Appalling Antarctic Calamity."

I tried to slide into the seat nearest to the door, but the old actress made room for me on the sofa close to the tea-table.

"You enjoyed the rehearsal? Yes?" she whispered.

"Hush!" said our landlady, handing me a cup of tea, and then the old colonel, standing back to the fire, began to read.

"Telegrams from New Zealand report the picking up of large fragments of a ship which were floating from the Antarctic seas. Among them were the bulwarks, some portions of the deck cargo, and the stern of a boat, bearing the name 'Scotia.'

"Grave fears are entertained that these fragments belong to the schooner of the South Pole expedition, which left Akaroa a few weeks ago, and the character of some of the remnants (being vital parts of a ship's structure) lead to the inference that the vessel herself must have foundered."

"Well, well," said the old clergyman, with his mouth full of buttered toast.

The walls of the room seemed to be moving around me. I could scarcely see; I could scarcely hear.

"Naturally there can be no absolute certainty that the 'Scotia' may not be still afloat, or that the members of the expedition may not have reached a place of safety, but the presence of large pieces of ice attached to some of the fragments seem to the best authorities to favour the theory that the unfortunate vessel was struck by one of the huge icebergs which have lately been floating up from the direction of the Admiralty Mountains, and in that case her fate will probably remain one of the many insoluble mysteries of the ocean."

"Now that's what one might call the irony of fate," said the old clergyman, "seeing that the object of the expedition . . ."

"Hush!"

"While the sympathy of the public will be extended to the families of all the explorers who have apparently perished in a brave effort to protect mankind from one of the worst dangers of the great deep, the entire world will mourn the loss (as we fear it may be) of the heroic young Commander, Doctor Martin Conrad, who certainly belonged to the ever-diminishing race of dauntless and intrepid souls who seem to be born will that sacred courage which leads men to render up their lives at the lure of the Unknown and the call of a great idea."

I felt as if I were drowning. At one moment there was the shrieking of waves about my face; at the next the rolling of billows over my head.

"Though it seems only too certain . . . this sacred courage quenched . . . let us not think such lives as his are wasted . . . only wasted lives . . . lives given up . . . inglorious ease . . . pursuit of idle amusements. . . . Therefore let loved ones left behind . . . take comfort . . . inspiring thought . . . if lost . . . not died in vain . . . Never pleasure but Death . . . the lure that draws true hearts. . . ."

I heard no more. The old colonel's voice, which had been beating on my brain like a hammer, seemed to die away in the distance.

"How hard you are breathing. What is amiss?" said our landlady.

I made no reply. Rising to my feet I became giddy and held on to the table cloth to prevent myself from falling.

The landlady jumped up to protect her crockery and at the same moment the old actress led me from the room. I excused myself on the ground of faintness, and the heat of the house after my quick walk home from the theatre.

Back in my bedroom my limbs gave way and I sank to the floor with my head on the chair. There was no uncertainty for me now. It was all over. The great love which had engrossed my life had gone.

In the overwhelming shock of that moment I could not think of the world's loss. I could not even think of Martin's. I could only think of my own, and once more I felt as if something of myself had been torn out of my breast.

"Why? Why?" I was crying in the depths of my heart—why, when I was so utterly alone, so helpless and so friendless, had the light by which I lived been quenched.

After a while the gong sounded for dinner. I got up and lay on the bed. The young waiter brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent them down again. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the floor below.

"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"

"What peeress?"

"Don't you remember—the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?"

"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now."

"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had lived to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . ."

"Ah, well, that's the way, you see."

The long night passed.

Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with galloping footsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to strike every few minutes, and then not to strike at all. At one moment I heard the bells of a neighbouring church ringing merrily, and by that I knew it was Christmas morning.

I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere in the blank reaches of that short space between night and day (like the slack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time when London rests, I fell into a troubled doze.

I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returning consciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of memory rushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I felt as if my heart were bleeding.

The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room the window looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It was my first experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it. If there had been one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart would have broken.

The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and wished me "a merry Christmas." I did my best to answer her.

The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it down, but I did not touch it.

Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and, finding me still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered "Yes," and while she was lighting a handful between the two bars of my little grate she talked of the news in the newspaper.

"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as 'ad a collusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em jolly well right I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking their lives for nothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of their wives and children. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I wouldn't let him! Not me! 'If you're married to a sailor,' says I, ''alf your time you never knows whether you 'as a 'usband or 'asn't.' 'Talk sense,' says Tom. 'I am a-talking sense,' says I, 'and then think of the kiddies,' I says."

After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the fire. I tried to think of others beside myself who must be suffering from the same disaster—especially of Martin's mother and the good old doctor. I pictured the sweet kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the bright silver bowls on the high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the slouree now. The light of that house was out, and two old people were sitting on either side of a cold hearth.

I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and told myself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had hitherto been relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on and Martin would come back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I was in the presence of nothingness. The sanctuary within me where Martin had lived was only a cemetery of the soul.

"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer.

Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such different plans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or warning that I was at last compelled to think of something besides my own loss.

My unborn child!

No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect, though millions of women must have had to face it. To have a child coming that is doomed before its birth to be fatherless—there is nothing in the world like that.

I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could ever know. If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge his offspring in spite of all the laws and conventions of life. But being dead he could not be charged with it. Therefore the name of the father of my unborn child must never, never, never be disclosed.

The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.

It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in a vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows of bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.

Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until a little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, rather fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to say that the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to join them. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:

"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though! Christmas night, too!"

Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent tooting of the taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned waltzes being played on the piano, and then a dull thudding noise on the floor below, mingled with laughter, which told me that the old boarders were dancing.

I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for nearly forty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had given me had brought me near to the blank shadowland which is death.

I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire to die. It was not to be suicide—my religion saved me from that—but death by exhaustion, by continuing to abstain from food, having no desire for it.

Martin was gone—what was there to live for? Had I not better die before my child came to life? And if I could go where Martin was I should be with him eternally.

Still I did not weep, but—whether audibly or only in the unconscious depths of my soul—more than once I cried to Martin by name.

"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"

I was in this mood (sitting in my chair as I had done all day and staring into the small slow fire which was slipping to the bottom of the grate) when I heard a soft step in the corridor outside. At the next moment my door was opened noiselessly, and somebody stepped into the room.

It was Mildred, and she knelt by my side and said in a low voice:

"You are in still deeper trouble, Mary—tell me."

I tried to pour out my heart to her as to a mother, but I could not do so, and indeed there was no necessity. The thought that must have rushed into my eyes was instantly reflected in hers.

"It is he, isn't it?" she whispered, and I could only bow my head.

"I thought so from the first," she said. "And now you are thinking of . . . of what is to come?"

Again I could only bow, but Mildred put her arms about me and said:

"Don't lose heart, dear. Our Blessed Lady sent me to take care of you. And I will—I will."

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

Surely Chance must be the damnedest conspirator against human happiness, or my darling could never have been allowed to suffer so much from the report that my ship was lost.

What actually happened is easily told.

Two days after we left Akaroa, N.Z., which was the last we saw of the world before we set our faces towards the Unknown, we ran into a heavy lumpy sea and made bad weather of it for forty-eight hours.

Going at good speed, however, we proceeded south on meridian 179 degrees E., latitude 68, when (just as we were sighting the Admiralty Mountains, our first glimpse of the regions of the Pole) we encountered a south-westerly gale, which, with our cumbersome deck cargo, made the handling of the ship difficult.

Nevertheless the Scotia rode bravely for several hours over the mountainous seas, though sometimes she rolled fifty degrees from side to side.

Towards nightfall we shipped a good deal of water; the sea smashed in part of our starboard bulwarks, destroyed the upper deck, washed out the galley, carried off two of our life boats and sent other large fragments of the vessel floating away to leeward.

At last the pumps became choked, and the water found its way to the engine-room. So to prevent further disaster we put out the fires, and then started, all hands, to bale out with buckets.

It was a sight to see every man-jack at work on that job (scientific staff included), and you would not have thought our spirits were much damped, whatever our bodies may have been, if you had been there when I cried, "Are we downhearted, shipmates?" and heard the shout that came up from fifty men (some of them waist deep in the water):

"No!"

We had a stiff tussle until after midnight, but we stuck hard, and before we turned into our bunks, we had fought the sea and beaten it.

Next morning broke fine and clear, with that fresh crisp air of the Antarctic which is the same to the explorer as the sniff of battle to the warhorse, and no sign of the storm except the sight of some lead-white icebergs which had been torn from the islands south-west of us.

Everybody was in high spirits at breakfast, and when one of the company started "Sweethearts and Wives" all hands joined in the chorus, and (voice or no voice) I had a bit of a go at it myself.

It is not the most solemn music ever slung together, but perhaps no anthem sung in a cathedral has ascended to heaven with a heartier spirit of thanksgiving.

When I went up on deck again, though, I saw that enough of our "wooden walls" had gone overboard to give "scarey people" the impression (if things were ever picked up, as I knew they would be, for the set of the current was to the north-east) that we had foundered, and that made me think of my dear one.

We had no wireless aboard, and the ship would not be going back to New Zealand until March, so I was helpless to correct the error; but I determined that the very first message from the very first station I set up on the Antarctic continent should be sent to her to say that I was safe and everything going splendid.

What happened on Christmas day is a longer story.

On the eighteenth of December, having landed some of my deck cargo and provisions, and sent up my ship to winter quarters, I was on my way, with ponies, dogs, and sledges and a large company of men, all in A1 condition, to the lower summit of Mount Erebus, for I intended to set up my first electric-power-wave station there—that being high enough, we thought, to permit of a message reaching the plateau of the Polar zone and low enough (allowing for the curvature of the earth) to cover the maximum distance in a northerly direction.

It was a long reach, but we chose the rocky ridges and moraines, trying to avoid the crevassed glaciers, and all went well until the twentieth, when just as we were reaching the steeper gradients a strong wind sprang up, blowing straight down the course before us.

All day long we toiled against it, but the weather grew worse, with gusts of sleet and snow, until the wind reached the force of a hurricane and the temperature fell to 28 degrees below zero.

There was nothing to do but to wait for the blizzard to blow itself out, so we plugged down our tents in the shelter of the rocky side of a ravine that had an immense snow-field behind it.

The first night was bad enough, for the canvas of one tent flew into ribbons, and the poor chaps in it had to lie uncovered in their half-frozen sleeping-bags until morning.

All through the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third the storm continued, sweeping with terrific force down the ravine, and whirling the snow in dense masses from the snow-field overhead.

Christmas Eve was worse, with the temperature down to 38 degrees below zero and the wind up to eighty miles an hour in gusts, and during the greater part of Christmas Day we were all confined to our sleeping-bags and half buried in the snow that had drifted in on us.

As a consequence we had no religious service, and if anybody said a De Profundis it was between his crackling lips under his frozen beard. We had no Christmas dinner either, except a few Plasmon biscuits and a nip of brandy and water, which were served out by good old O'Sullivan who had come with me as doctor to the expedition.

On St. Stephen's Day I made a round of the camp and found the ponies suffering terribly and the dogs badly hit. The storm was telling on the men too, for some of them were down with dysentery, and the toes of one poor chap were black from frostbite.

I was fit enough myself, thank God, but suffering from want of sleep or rather from a restless feeling which broken sleep brought with it.

The real truth is that never since I sailed had I been able to shake off the backward thought that I ought not to have left my dear one behind me. In active work, like the gale, I could dismiss the idea of her danger; but now that I had nothing to do but to lie like a log in a sleeping-bag, I suffered terribly from my recollection of her self-sacrifice and my fear of the consequences that might come of it.

This was not so bad in the daytime, for even in the midst of the whirling snow and roaring wind I had only to close my eyes, and I could see her as she came up the road in the sunshine that Sunday morning when she was returning from church in her drooping hat and fluttering veil, or as she looked at me with her great "seeing eyes" at the last moment of all when she compelled me to come away.

But the night was the devil. No sooner did I drop off to sleep than I awoke with a start at the sound of her voice calling me by my name.

"Martin! Martin!"

It was always a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying to me to come back.

That was about the one thing in the world that was impossible to me now, and yet I knew that getting assurance from somewhere that my dear one was being cared for was the only way to set my mind at rest for the job that was before me.

It may seem ridiculous that I should have thought of that, but everybody who has ever been with Nature in her mighty solitudes, aloof from the tides of life, knows that the soul of man is susceptible down there to signs which would seem childish amid the noise and bustle of the world.

It was like that with me.

I shared my tent with O'Sullivan, the chief of our scientific staff, and Treacle, who thought it his duty to take care of me, though the work was generally the other way about.

The old salt had been badly battered, and I had not liked the way he had been mumbling about "mother," which is not a good sign in a stalwart chap when his strength is getting low.

So while buttoning up the tent on the night after Christmas Day I was a bit touched up to see old Treacle, who had lived the life of a rip, fumbling at his breast and hauling something out with an effort.

It was a wooden image of the Virgin (about the length of my hand) daubed over with gilt and blue paint, and when he stuck it up in front of his face as he lay in his sleeping-bag, I knew that he expected to go out before morning, and wished that to be the last thing his old eyes should rest on.

I am not much of a man for saints myself (having found that we get out of tight places middling well without them), but perhaps what Treacle did got down into some secret place of my soul, for I felt calmer as I fell asleep, and when I awoke it was not from the sound of my darling's voice, but from a sort of deafening silence.

The roaring of the wind had ceased; the blizzard was over; the lamp that hung from the staff of the tent had gone out; and there was a sheet of light coming in from an aperture in the canvas.

It was the midnight sun of the Antarctic, and when I raised my head I saw that it fell full on the little gilded image of the Virgin. Anybody who has never been where I was then may laugh if he likes and welcome, but that was enough for me. It was all right! Somebody was looking after my dear one!

I shouted to my shipmates to get up and make ready, and at dawn, when we started afresh on our journey, there may have been dark clouds over our heads but the sun was shining inside of us.

M.C.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

Sister Mildred was right. Our Blessed Lady must have interceded for me, because help came immediately.

I awoke on St. Stephen's morning with that thrilling emotion which every mother knows to be the first real and certain consciousness of motherhood.

It is not for me to describe the physical effects of that great change. But the spiritual effect is another matter. It was like that of a miracle. God in his great mercy, looking down on me in my sorrow, had sent one of His ministering angels to comfort me.

It seemed to say:

"Don't be afraid. He who went away is not lost to you. Something of himself is about to return."

I felt no longer that I was to be left alone in my prison-house of London, because Martin's child was to bear me company—to be a link between us, an everlasting bond, so that he and I should be together to the end.

I tremble to say what interpretation I put upon all this—how it seemed to be a justification of what I did on the night before Martin left Ellan, as if God, knowing he would not return, had prompted me, so that when my dark hour came I might have this great hope for my comforter.

And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how joyful!

Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn child, as a fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery and the joy of the coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had shed any tears they would have dried them.

And then the future!

I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and already I could see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As she grew up I would talk to her of her father—the brave explorer, the man of destiny, who laid down his life in a great work for the world. We should always be talking of him—we two alone together, because he belonged to us and nobody else in the world besides. Everything I have written here I should tell her—at least the beautiful part of it, the part about our love, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could quench.

Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have been so happy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if it was so, and it was so.

Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in my physical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know. But one thing is sure—that hope and prayer and the desire of life awoke in me again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I became another and a happier woman.

Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she returned a few days later. Then she brought me down plump to material matters. We had first to consider the questions of ways and means, in order to find out how to face the future.

It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June, and I had only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was clear that I could not stay in the boarding-house much longer.

Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live inexpensively during their period of waiting. They were partly philanthropic and therefore subject to certain regulations, which my resolute determination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit it to be mentioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but Mildred hoped to find one that would take me on her recommendation without asking further question.

In this expectation we set out in search of a Maternity Home. What a day of trial we had! I shall never forget it.

The first home we called at was a Catholic one in the neighbourhood of our boarding-house.

It had the appearance of a convent, and that pleased me exceedingly. After we had passed the broad street door, with its large brass plate and small brass grille, we were shown into a little waiting-room with tiled floor, distempered walls, and coloured pictures of the saints.

The porteress told us the Mother was at prayers with the inmates, but would come downstairs presently, and while we waited we heard the dull hum of voices, the playing of an organ, and the singing of the sweet music I knew so well.

Closing my eyes I felt myself back in Rome, and began to pray that I might be permitted to remain there. But the desire was damped when the Mother entered the room.

She was a stout woman, wearing heavy outdoor boots and carrying her arms interlaced before her, with the hands hidden in the ample sleeves of her habit, and her face was so white and expressionless, that it might have been cast in plaster of Paris.

In a rather nervous voice Mildred explained our errand. "Mother," she said, "I cannot tell you anything about this young lady, and I have come to ask if you will take her on my recommendation."

"My dear child," said the Mother, "that would be utterly against our rule. Not to know who the young lady is, where she comes from, why she is here, and whether she is married or single or a widow—it is quite impossible."

Mildred, looking confused and ashamed, said:

"She can afford to pay a little."

"That makes no difference."

"But I thought that in exceptional cases . . ."

"There can be no exceptional cases, Sister. If the young lady is married and can say that her husband consents, or single and can give us assurance that her father or guardian agrees, or a widow and can offer satisfactory references . . ."

Mildred looked across at me, but I shook my head.

"In that case there seems to be nothing more to say," said the Mother, and rising without ceremony she walked with us to the door.

Our next call was at the headquarters of a home which was neither Catholic nor Protestant, but belonged, Mildred said, to a kind of Universal Church, admitting inmates of all denominations.

It was in a busy thoroughfare and had the appearance of a business office. After Mildred had written her name and the object of our visit on a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to another office with an open safe, where a man in a kind of uniform (called a Commissioner) was signing letters and cheques.

The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for something quite other than I was until Mildred explained our errand, and then his manner changed painfully.

"What you ask is against all our regulations," he said. "Secrecy implies something to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit anything to be hidden. In fact our system requires that we should not only help the woman, but punish the man by making him realise his legal, moral, and religious liability for his wrong-doing. Naturally we can only do this by help of the girl, and if she does not tell us at the outset who and what the partner of her sin has been and where he is to be found. . . ."

I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet I said to Mildred:

"Let us go, please."

"Ah, yes, I know," said the Commissioner, with a superior smile, "I have seen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to shield the guilty man. But why should she? It may seem generous, but it is really wicked. It is a direct means of increasing immorality. The girl who protects the author of her downfall is really promoting the ruin of another woman, and if. . . ."

Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, and in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office, and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow me.

Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little brick house that seemed to lean against the wall of a large lying-in hospital in the West End of London.

At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in the drawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the Conversion of the Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby into a little back-parlour which overlooked, through a glass screen, a large apartment, wherein a number of young women, who had the appearance of dressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were sewing tiny pieces of linen and flannel that were obviously baby-clothes.

There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight smell of carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of the screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands in the room overhead.

After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare stairs, followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and then the Matron came into the parlour.

She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress, and she seemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting for Mildred's explanation she began to ask my name, my age, and where I came from.

Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then, with even more nervousness than ever, made the same request as before.

The Matron seemed aghast.

"Most certainly not," she said. "My committee would never dream of such a thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have fallen from the path of virtue, as well as their still more unfortunate offspring, we always make the most searching inquiries. In fact, we keep a record of every detail of every case. Listen to this," she added, and opening a large leather-bound hook like a ledger, she began to read one of its entries:

"H.J., aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents, was led astray [that was not the word] in a lonely road very late at night by a sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . . ."

But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from the room and the house into the noisy street outside.

All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me that, while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to comfort and console me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a better woman than I had been before, man, with his false and cruel morality, with his machine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it as a whip to punish not only me but Martin.

But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would die in the streets first!

Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and certainly Mildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in the street we turned our faces homeward and were half way back to the boarding-house before we spoke again.

Then she said:

"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll all want references."

I answered that they should never get them.