. It only increased her
self-sympathy. She listened till she could listen no longer, and
putting her hands over her ears she rested her head upon the table, and
was overcome with unconquerable emotion. Poor Andrew stared at her,
utterly incapable of comprehending the scene. When she had recovered,
he quietly asked her what was the matter.

"Matter!" she cried. "I don't believe you understand or care any more
than the bedstead on which you lie," and she rose and flung herself out
of the house. In those days there was, perhaps there is now, a
path--it could not be called a road--from the southern end of London
Bridge to Bankside. It went past St. Saviour's Church, and then
trending towards the river, dived, scarcely four feet wide, underneath
some mill or mill offices, skirting a little dock which, ran up between
the mill walls. Barges sometimes lay moored in this dock, and
discharged into the warehouses which towered above it. The path then
emerged into a dark trench between lofty buildings connected overhead
with bridges, and finally appeared in Bankside amidst heaps of old iron
and broken glass, the two principal articles of merchandise in those
parts. A dismal, most depressing region, one on which the sun never
shone, gloomy on the brightest day. It was impossible to enter it
without feeling an instantaneous check to all lightness of heart. The
spirits were smitten as if with paralysis directly St. Saviour's was
passed. Thither went Miriam aimlessly that night; and when she reached
the dock, the temptation presented itself to her with fearful force to
throw herself in it and be at rest. Usually in our troubles there is a
prospect of an untried resource which may afford relief, or a glimmer
of a distance which we may possibly reach, and where we may find peace,
but for Miriam there was no distance, no reserve: this was her first
acquaintance with an experience not rare, alas! but below it humanity
cannot go, when all life ebbs from us, when we stretch out our arms in
vain, when there is no God--nothing but a brazen Moloch, worse than the
Satan of theology ten thousand times, because it is dead. A Satan we
might conquer, or at least we should feel the delight of combat in
resisting him; but what can we do against this leaden "order of things"
which makes our nerves ministers of madness? Miriam did not know that
her misery was partly a London misery, due to the change from fresh air
and wholesome living t