n, it is true; yet
on the other hand it was annoying to be compelled to promenade, come
Sundays, in shiny elbows and frayed trousers, knowing all the while
that finished, waiting, was a suit in which one might have made one's
mark--had only one shut one's eyes passing that pastry-cook's window on
pay-day. Surely there should be a sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks
to deal in cellars or behind drawn blinds.

Were it because of its mere material hardships that to this day I think
of that period of my life with a shudder, I should not here confess to
it. I was alone. I knew not a living soul to whom I dared to speak, who
cared to speak to me. For those first twelve months after my mother's
death I lived alone, thought alone, felt alone. In the morning, during
the busy day, it was possible to bear; but in the evenings the sense
of desolation gripped me like a physical pain. The summer evenings
came again, bringing with them the long, lingering light so laden with
melancholy. I would walk into the Parks and, sitting there, watch with
hungry eyes the men and women, boys and girls, moving all around me,
talking, laughing, interested in one another; feeling myself some
speechless ghost, seeing but not seen, crying to the living with a voice
they heard not. Sometimes a solitary figure would pass by and glance
back at me; some lonely creature like myself longing for human sympathy.
In the teeming city must have been thousands such--young men and women
to whom a friendly ear, a kindly voice, would have been as the water of
life. Each imprisoned in his solitary cell of shyness, we looked at one
another through the grating with condoling eyes; further than that
was forbidden to us. Once, in Kensington Gardens, a woman turned, then
slowly retracing her steps, sat down beside me on the bench. Neither of
us spoke; had I done so she would have risen and moved away; yet there
was understanding between us. To each of us it was some comfort to sit
thus for a little while beside the other. Had she poured out her heart
to me, she could have told me nothing more than I knew: "I, too, am
lonely, friendless; I, too, long for the sound of a voice, the touch of
a hand. It is hard for you, it is harder still for me, a girl; shut out
from the bright world that laughs around me; denied the right of
youth to joy and pleasure; denied the right of womanhood to love and
tenderness."

The footsteps to and fro grew fewer. She moved to rise. Stirred by