of the poorest. Very far from that; only with the utmost
difficulty, with wearisome exertion, with harassing sacrifice, can
people who are pinched for money preserve a moderate purity in their
persons and their surroundings. By painful degrees Amy had accustomed
herself to compromises in this particular which in the early days of her
married life would have seemed intensely disagreeable, if not revolting.
A housewife who lives in the country, and has but a patch of back
garden, or even a good-sized kitchen, can, if she thinks fit, take her
place at the wash-tub and relieve her mind on laundry matters; but to
the inhabitant of a miniature flat in the heart of London anything of
that kind is out of the question.

When Amy began to cut down her laundress's bill, she did it with a
sense of degradation. One grows accustomed, however, to such unpleasant
necessities, and already she had learnt what was the minimum of
expenditure for one who is troubled with a lady's instincts.

No, no; cleanliness is a costly thing, and a troublesome thing when
appliances and means have to be improvised. It was, in part, the
understanding she had gained of this side of the life of poverty that
made Amy shrink in dread from the still narrower lodgings to which
Reardon invited her. She knew how subtly one's self-respect can be
undermined by sordid conditions. The difference between the life of
well-to-do educated people and that of the uneducated poor is not
greater in visible details than in the minutiae of privacy, and Amy
must have submitted to an extraordinary change before it would have been
possible for her to live at ease in the circumstances which satisfy a
decent working-class woman. She was prepared for final parting from her
husband rather than try to effect that change in herself.

She undressed at leisure, and stretched her limbs in the cold, soft,
fragrant bed. A sigh of profound relief escaped her. How good it was to
be alone!

And in a quarter of an hour she was sleeping as peacefully as the child
who shared her room.

At breakfast in the morning she showed a bright, almost a happy face. It
was long, long since she had enjoyed such a night's rest, so undisturbed
with unwelcome thoughts on the threshold of sleep and on awaking. Her
life was perhaps wrecked, but the thought of that did not press upon
her; for the present she must enjoy her freedom. It was like a recovery
of girlhood. There are few married women who would not,