The street
was very still. Philip did not feel inclined to go to bed. It was the end
of his work and he need not hurry. He strolled along, glad of the fresh
air and the silence; he thought that he would go on to the bridge and look
at day break on the river. A policeman at the corner bade him
good-morning. He knew who Philip was from his bag.

"Out late tonight, sir," he said.

Philip nodded and passed. He leaned against the parapet and looked towards
the morning. At that hour the great city was like a city of the dead. The
sky was cloudless, but the stars were dim at the approach of day; there
was a light mist on the river, and the great buildings on the north side
were like palaces in an enchanted island. A group of barges was moored in
midstream. It was all of an unearthly violet, troubling somehow and
awe-inspiring; but quickly everything grew pale, and cold, and gray. Then
the sun rose, a ray of yellow gold stole across the sky, and the sky was
iridescent. Philip could not get out of his eyes the dead girl lying on
the bed, wan and white, and the boy who stood at the end of it like a
stricken beast. The bareness of the squalid room made the pain of it more
poignant. It was cruel that a stupid chance should have cut off her life
when she was just entering upon it; but in the very moment of saying this
to himself, Philip thought of the life which had been in store for her,
the bearing of children, the dreary fight with poverty, the youth broken
by toil and deprivation into a slatternly middle age--he saw the pretty
face grow thin and white, the hair grow scanty, the pretty hands, worn
down brutally by work, become like the claws of an old animal--then, when
the man was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small
wages he had to take; and the inevitable, abject penury of the end: she
might be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have saved her; in
the end was the workhouse or subsistence on the charity of her children.
Who could pity her because she had died when life offered so little?

But pity was inane. Philip felt it was not that which these people needed.
They did not pity themselves. They accepted their fate. It was the natural
order of things. Otherwise, good heavens! otherwise they would swarm over
the river in their multitude to the side where those great buildings were,
secure and stately, and they would pillage, burn, and sack. But the day,
tender and pale, had broken now, and the