ut I could not help it.

And then came the moment of _my_ fiercest trial. With a sense of Death
hanging over my child I told myself that the only way to drive it off
was to make _some great sacrifice_.

Hitherto I had thought of everything I possessed as belonging to baby,
but now I felt that _I myself_ belonged to her. I had brought her into
the world, and it was my duty to see that she did not suffer.

All this time the inherited instinct of my religion was fighting hard
with me, and I was saying many Hail Marys to prevent myself from doing
what I meant to do.

"_Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee_ . . ."

I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use struggling
against the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I thought it)
which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it conquered me.

"I must get money," I thought. "Unless I get money my child will die.
I--must--get--money."

Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on my coat
and fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins.

"Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver.

"I am going out. I'll be back in the morning," I answered.

And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again--my sweet child, my
Isabel--I tore the street door open, and pulled it noisily behind me.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH CHAPTER

On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram, for
though I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague memories of
lights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric cars.

At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further fare)
because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the lights in the
shops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the edge of the pavement,
where women with baskets on their arms were doing their Saturday night's
shopping.

My heart was still strong (sharpened indeed into, poignancy) and I know
I was not crying, for at one moment as I passed the mirror in a
chemist's window I caught sight of my face and it was fierce as flame.

At another moment, while I was hurrying along, I collided with a drunken
woman who was coming out of a public-house with her arm about the neck
of a drunken sailor.

"Gawd! Here's the Verging Mary agine!" she cried.

It was the woman who had carried baby, and when I tried to hurry past
her she said:

"You think I'm drunk, don't you, dear? So'am. Don't you never get drunk?
No? What