inst her will to see
me,--could I write to say when she was to meet me? No,--but I could
write to the baudy house, and they would send on the letter. I called
there one morning, and left a letter. The Mistress was a shortish
sandy-haired woman about thirty years old, with a white face; she looked
very fixedly at me, and smiled. She would send on the letter to Miss
Sarah Mavis which I found was the name she went by; but Sarah never came
to my letter, and I paid for the room for nothing. Then I sent for the
Mistress; had a bottle of champagne with her, and she opened her heart
a little, she was soon a little screwed, and this was what she told me.
Her name was Hannah.

She had not known Miss Mavis long,--only a month or so before she had
come in with me,--did not often see her now excepting with me. Mavis had
been asking if I had been seen in the house with any other woman, "and
of course I did not tell her," said Sandyhead. She thought her a nice
woman, and had struck up acquaintance with her. Now she often came
into the parlour to chat with her when I had left, or before she came
upstairs to me, when I was at the house before my appointed time.

Things went on thus for a little time longer, Sarah doing much as she
liked, but certainly becoming more complaisant. She stopped longer, we
began to talk; I was of course curious about her, she about me, I dare
say she got much out of me, I but little out of her. What I mainly
learned was that she only came on the streets occasionally, and from
about eleven to one o'clock in the day,--never afterwards; and when she
had sufficient money to "go on with," as she said, she came not out at
all. "I hate it," said she, "hate you men,--you are all beasts,--you're
never satisfied unless you are pulling a woman about in all manner of
ways." "It pleases us," said I, "we admire you so." "Well it does not
please me,--I want them to do what they have to do, and let me go." "Why
don't you go out in the afternoon or evening?" "No, I get my money in
the morning, and have other things to do the rest of the day."

She had not been gay long,--not more than a month before I had met
her,--was taken to the house in J... s Street by the first man who met
her in the streets, and had been there often since. No she never had
been gay before, she would swear, and often wished she were dead rather
than have to come out, and let men pull her about, and put their nasty
muck into her,--"nasty muck" was alwa