I go," she repeated to herself with fierce
obstinacy. She put out her hand just in time to steady herself against a
lamp-post. "I'll never get there before morning," she thought. The fear
of death paralysed her efforts to escape the gallows. It seemed to her
she had been staggering in that street for hours. "I'll never get
there," she thought. "They'll find me knocking about the streets. It's
too far." She held on, panting under her black veil.

"The drop given was fourteen feet."

She pushed the lamp-post away from her violently, and found herself
walking. But another wave of faintness overtook her like a great sea,
washing away her heart clean out of her breast. "I will never get
there," she muttered, suddenly arrested, swaying lightly where she stood.
"Never."

And perceiving the utter impossibility of walking as far as the nearest
bridge, Mrs Verloc thought of a flight abroad.

It came to her suddenly. Murderers escaped. They escaped abroad. Spain
or California. Mere names. The vast world created for the glory of man
was only a vast blank to Mrs Verloc. She did not know which way to turn.
Murderers had friends, relations, helpers--they had knowledge. She had
nothing. She was the most lonely of murderers that ever struck a mortal
blow. She was alone in London: and the whole town of marvels and mud,
with its maze of streets and its mass of lights, was sunk in a hopeless
night, rested at the bottom of a black abyss from which no unaided woman
could hope to scramble out.

She swayed forward, and made a fresh start blindly, with an awful dread
of falling down; but at the end of a few steps, unexpectedly, she found a
sensation of support, of security. Raising her head, she saw a man's
face peering closely at her veil. Comrade Ossipon was not afraid of
strange women, and no feeling of false delicacy could prevent him from
striking an acquaintance with a woman apparently very much intoxicated.
Comrade Ossipon was interested in women. He held up this one between his
two large palms, peering at her in a business-like way till he heard her
say faintly "Mr Ossipon!" and then he very nearly let her drop to the
ground.

"Mrs Verloc!" he exclaimed. "You here!"

It seemed impossible to him that she should have been drinking. But one
never knows. He did not go into that question, but attentive not to
discourage kind fate surrendering to him the widow of Comrade Verloc, he
tried to draw her to his br