re was one day of the week when, from causes peculiar to my
situation, my loneliness must have been deeper than that of the most
friendless refugee.

Nearly every boarder in our boarding-house used to receive once a week
or once a month a letter containing a remittance from some unknown
source, with which he paid his landlady and discharged his other
obligations.

I had no such letter to receive, so to keep up the character I had not
made but allowed myself to maintain (of being a commander's wife) I used
to go out once a week under pretence of calling at a shipping office to
draw part of my husband's pay.

In my childish ignorance of the habits of business people I selected
Saturday afternoon for this purpose; and in my fear of encountering my
husband, or my husband's friends in the West End streets, I chose the
less conspicuous thoroughfares at the other side of the river.

Oh, the wearisome walks I had on Saturday afternoons, wet or dry, down
the Seven Dials, across Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall, round the
eastern end of the Houses of Parliament, and past Westminster Pier (dear
to me from one poignant memory), and so on and on into the monotonous
and inconspicuous streets beyond.

Towards nightfall I would return, generally by the footway across
Hungerford Bridge, which is thereby associated with the most painful
moments of my life, for nowhere else did I feel quite so helpless and so
lonely.

The trains out of Charing Cross shrieking past me, the dark river
flowing beneath, the steamers whistling under the bridge, the
automobiles tooting along the Embankment, the clanging of the electric
cars, the arc lamps burning over the hotels and the open flares blazing
over the theatres--all the never-resting life of London--and myself in
the midst of the tumultuous solitude, a friendless and homeless girl.

But God in His mercy saved me from all that--saved me too, in ways in
which it was only possible to save a woman.

The first way was through my vanity.

Glancing at myself in my mottled mirror one morning I was shocked to see
that what with my loneliness and my weary walks I was losing my looks,
for my cheeks were hollow, my nose was pinched, my eyes were heavy with
dark rings underneath them, and I was plainer than Martin had ever seen
me.

This frightened me.

It would be ridiculous to tell all the foolish things I did after that
to improve and preserve my appearance for Martin's sake, because every
gi