t I
had not done so.

It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I first
came to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the weather was
warm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that, thinking only that
it was my best and most attractive.

After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little swinging
looking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time that my face was
deadly pale, and that made me think of some bottles and cardboard boxes
which lay in the pockets of my trunk.

I knew what they contained--the remains of the cosmetics which I had
bought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying to make my husband
love me. Never since then had I looked at them, but now I took them out
(with a hare's foot and some pads and brushes) and began to paint my
pale face--reddening my cracked and colourless lips and powdering out
the dark rings under my eyes.

While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the deadened
sound of the singing in the front street, with the young woman's treble
voice above the man's bass and the wheezing of the accordion:

"_Yes, we'll gather, at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its, crystal tide for ever
Flowing by the throne of God_."

The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time, poor
vessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that while I
listened I laughed--thinking what mockery was to sing of "angel feet"
and "crystal tides" to those shivering wretches at the corner of the
London street in the smoky night air.

"What a farce!" I thought. "What a heartless farce!"

Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking out of my
trunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn since I left
Ellan, I began to pull them on.

I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing this, and
trying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was suddenly smitten by
a new thought.

I was about to commit suicide--the worst kind of suicide, not the
suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on earth after
death!

After that night Mary O'Neill would no longer exist! I should never he
able to think of her again! I should have killed her and buried her and
stamped the earth down on her and she would be gone from me for ever!

That made a grip at my heart--awakening memories of happy days in my
childhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the