our time you never
knows whether you 'as a 'usband or 'asn't.' 'Talk sense,' says Tom. 'I
_am_ a-talking sense,' says I, 'and then think of the kiddies,' I says."

After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the fire. I
tried to think of others beside myself who must be suffering from the
same disaster--especially of Martin's mother and the good old doctor. I
pictured the sweet kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the bright
silver bowls on the high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the
_slouree_ now. The light of that house was out, and two old people were
sitting on either side of a cold hearth.

I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and told
myself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had hitherto
been relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on and Martin would
come back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I was in the presence of
nothingness. The sanctuary within me where Martin had lived was only a
cemetery of the soul.

"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer.

Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such different
plans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or warning that I was
at last compelled to think of something besides my own loss.

My unborn child!

No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect, though
millions of women must have had to face it. To have a child coming that
is doomed before its birth to be fatherless--there is nothing in the
world like that.

I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could ever know.
If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge his offspring in
spite of all the laws and conventions of life. But being dead he could
not be charged with it. Therefore the name of the father of my unborn
child must never, never, never be disclosed.

The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.

It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in a
vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows of
bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.

Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until a
little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, rather
fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to say
that the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to join
them. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:

"Young women often suffer