not admit of any delay. Between this moment and the moment of absolute want was but an hour, two hours, three hours, a condition which must arise absolutely by sunset. She could do nothing. It was possible to walk about the streets, no doubt, until death overtook her; but why should she wait for death. If Death were coming, why should she not go and meet him half-way? Still it was hard to die. To die now in the full summer, when one was young and full of health, although bankrupt in hope, when the sun was bright, and the air was clear, and great London at its most beautiful. To die now without even the chance of communicating with him, Dominique? He, too, was ill, dying perhaps. Yes, he was dying. His affection towards her seemed waning. He had no worldly prospect, and her little fortune was wholly gone. If death would only come in some pleasant shape she would greet it gladly; but the notion of wooing death was cold and repugnant. The waters of the river were chill, and full of noises and foul contagion. People had not willed themselves into life; why should they not be allowed to will themselves out of it? For hours she walked along the crowded streets of London. Moment by moment faintness and the sense of dereliction grew upon her. The active troubles of the morning had passed away, and were now succeeded by a dull numbing sense of hopelessness. She had no longer the energy to protest against her fate. She moved through the crowded ways without hope, without fear, without anticipation, without retrospection. She had the dull, dead sense of being an impertinence in life, nothing more. She wished that life were done with her. Life was now a tyrannical taskmaster, who obliged her to walk on endlessly, with no goal in view; who compelled her to pass among this infinite multitude, debarred of all sympathy with them, of all participation in their joys. At length the sun fell, and minute by minute the busy streets grew stiller. The great human tide of London was ebbing to the cool and leafy suburbs. She found herself in a neighbourhood which she had never before trodden. She had passed St. Paul's, going east, and then turned down some dark, deserted way, until she found the air growing cooler and the place stiller. "I must be near the Thames," she thought. "Fate is directing my steps. The future is a blank. Let the present be death." She was now beginning to feel faint from physical exhaustion. She had sought that solitary way because she found she could no longer walk steadily. She had eaten nothing that day. It was now close to midnight. This place seemed so sequestered, so far away from the feet of men, that she felt she might lie down and sleep until the uprousing of the great city. But she thought: "If I sleep here, I shall wake here, and what good will that be to me? If I sleep in the river, I shall wake--Elsewhere." She found herself under a square tower. She leaned against the wall, irresolute or faint. She moaned, but uttered no word. In a few moments she placed her hand against the wall and pushed herself from it, as though repelling a final entreaty. Then she staggered down the street and into a narrow laneway that led to the river.