regret, she
was what her quick blood made her, for the time. She recognized that, for
one near extinction, it was useless to love or to hate: so Wilfrid and
Lady Charlotte were spared. Emilia thought of them both with a sort of
equanimity; not that any clear thought filled her brain through that
delirious night. The intoxicating music raged there at one level
depression, never rising any scale, never undulating ever so little,
scarcely changing its barbarous monotony of notes. She had no power over
it. Her critical judgement would at another moment have shrieked at it.
She was moved by it as by a mechanical force.

The South-west wind blew, and the hours of the night were not evil to
outcasts. Emilia saw many lying about, getting rest where they might. She
hurried her eye pityingly over little children, but the devil that had
seized her sprang contempt for the others--older beggars, who appeared to
succumb to their fate when they should have lifted their heads up
bravely. On she passed from square to market, market to park; and
presently her mind shot an arrow of desire for morning, which was nothing
less than hunger beginning to stir. "When will the shops open?" She tried
to cheat herself by replying that she did not care when, but pangs of
torment became too rapid for the counterfeit. Her imagination raised the
roof from those great rich houses, and laid bare a brilliancy of
dish-covers; and if any sharp gust of air touched the nerve in her
nostril, it seemed instantaneously charged with the smell of old dinners.
"No," cried Emilia, "I dislike anything but plain food." She quickly gave
way, and admitted a craving for dainty morsels. "One lump of sugar!" she
subsequently sighed. But neither sugar nor meat approached her.

Her seat was under trees, between a man and a woman who slanted from her
with hidden chins. The chilly dry leaves began to waken, and the sky
showed its grey. Hunger had become as a leaden ball in Emilia's chest.
She could have eaten eagerly still, but she had no ravenous images of
food. Nevertheless, she determined to beg for bread at a baker's shop.
Coming into the empty streets again, the dread of exposing her solitary
wretchedness and the stains of night upon her, kept her back. When she
did venture near the baker's shop, her sensation of weariness, want of
washing, and general misery, made her feel a contrast to all other women
she saw, that robbed her of the necessary effrontery. She preferred t