Soon after he was "wanted" by the police; they escaped to
Belgium, and it devolved on Sarah to support him. The hue and cry over,
they came back to London.
She had been sitting up for him; he had come home exasperated and
disappointed. A row soon began; and she thought that he would strike her.
But he refrained, for fear, perhaps, of the other lodgers. He took her
instead by the arm, dragged her down the broken staircase, and pushed her
into the court. She heard the retreating footsteps, and saw a cat slink
through a grating, and she wished that she too could escape from the light
into the dark.
A few belated women still lingered in the Strand, and the city stood up
like a prison, hard and stark in the cold, penetrating light of morning.
She sat upon a pillar's base, her eyes turned towards the cabmen's
shelter. The horses munched in their nose-bags, and the pigeons came down
from their roosts. She was dressed in an old black dress, her hands lay
upon her knees, and the pose expressed so perfectly the despair and
wretchedness in her soul that a young man in evening clothes, who had
looked sharply at her as he passed, turned and came back to her, and he
asked her if he could assist her. She answered, "Thank you, sir." He
slipped a shilling into her hand. She was too broken-hearted to look up in
his face, and he walked away wondering what was her story.
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