ty the dome of St. Paul's; its vastness
suffered no diminution from this high outlook, rather was exaggerated
by the flying scraps of mirky vapour which softened its outline and at
times gave it the appearance of floating on a vague troubled sea.
Somewhat nearer, amid many spires and steeples, lay the surly bulk of
Newgate, the lines of its construction shown plan-wise; its little
windows multiplied for points of torment to the vision. Nearer again,
the markets of Smithfield, Bartholomew's Hospital, the tract of modern
deformity, cleft by a gulf of railway, which spreads between
Clerkenwell Road and Charterhouse Street. Down in Farringdon Street the
carts, waggons, vans, cabs, omnibuses, crossed and intermingled in a
steaming splash-bath of mud; human beings, reduced to their due
paltriness, seemed to toil in exasperation along the strips of
pavement, bound on errands, which were a mockery, driven automaton-like
by forces they neither understood nor could resist.

'Can I go out into a world like that--alone?' was the thought which
made Clara's spirit fail as she stood gazing. 'Can I face life as it is
for women who grow old in earning bare daily bread among those terrible
streets? Year after year to go in and out from some wretched garret
that I call home, with my face hidden, my heart stabbed with misery
till it is cold and bloodless!

Then her eye fell upon the spire of St. James's Church, on Clerkenwell
Green, whose bells used to be so familiar to her. The memory was only
of discontent and futile aspiration, but--Oh, if it were possible to be
again as she was then, and yet keep the experience with which life had
since endowed her! With no moral condemnation did she view the records
of her rebellion; but how easy to see now that ignorance had been one
of the worst obstacles in her path, and that, like all unadvised
purchasers, she had paid a price that might well have been spared. A
little more craft, a little more patience--it is with these that the
world is conquered. The world was her enemy, and had proved too strong;
woman though she was--only a girl striving to attain the place for
which birth adapted her--pursuing only her irrepressible
instincts--fate flung her to the ground pitilessly, and bade her live
out the rest of her time in wretchedness.

No! There remained one more endeavour that was possible to her, one
bare hope of saving herself from the extremity which only now she
estimated at its full horror.