iously
clasping my baby closer.

The corteges became so numerous at last that to shut out painful sights
I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter things.

I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always seen it in
my mind's eye--not a pretentious place at all, only a little humble
cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and perhaps with
roses.

I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn sharply
to the left. Then opening my eyes I saw that we were running down a kind
of alley-way, with a row of very mean little two-storey houses on the
one side, and on the other, a kind of waste ground strewn with broken
bottles, broken iron pans, broken earthenware and other refuse,
interspersed with tufts of long scraggy grass, which looked the more
wretched because the sinking sun was glistening over it.

Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped. Then the old man jumped from
his box and opening his cab door, said:

"Here you are, missie. This is your destingnation."

There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I got out
of the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I was standing
on a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which bore the number
10.

At first I was stunned. Then my heart was in my mouth and it was as much
as I could do not to burst out crying. Finally I wanted to fly, and I
turned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already passing round
the corner.

It was six o'clock. I was very tired. I was nine miles from Bayswater. I
could not possibly carry baby back. What _could_ I do?

Then, my brain being unable to think, a mystic feeling (born perhaps of
my life in the convent) came over me--a feeling that all that had
happened on my long journey, all I had seen and everything that had been
said to me, had been intended to prepare me for (and perhaps to save me
from) the dangers that were to come.

I think that gave me a certain courage, for with what strength of body
and spirit I had left (though my heart was in my mouth still) I stepped
across the pavement and knocked at the door.

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My great-hearted, heroic little woman!

All this time I, in my vain belief that our expedition was of some
consequence to the world, was trying to comfort myself with the thought
that my darling must have heard of my safety.

But how could I imagine that she had hidden herself away in a mass of
humanit