It wasn't easy to reconcile oneself to such philanthropy, but after a sleepless night, and with rather a sickening pang of mingled hope and fear, I set off for this hospital.

It was a fine Sunday morning. The working-men in the East End were sitting at their doors smoking their pipes and reading their Sunday papers; but when I reached the West all the church bells were ringing, and people wearing black clothes and shiny black gloves were walking with measured steps through the wide courtyard that led to the chapel.

I will not say that I did not feel some qualms at entering a Protestant church, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up at the gallery of the organ, where the children sat tier on tier, so quaint and sweet--the boys like robins in their bright red waistcoats, and the girls like rabbits in their mob-caps with fluted frills--and the service began, and the fresh young voices rose in hymns of praise to the good Father of us all, I thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabel there some day and hearing her singing in the choir.

When the service was over I asked for the secretary and was shown into his room.

I dare say he was a good man, but oh! why will so many good people wear such wintry weather in their faces that merely to look at them pierces a poor woman to the soul?

Apologising for the day, I told my story again (my head a little down), saying I understood that it was no barrier to a child in that orphanage that she had been born outside the pale of the law.

"On the contrary," said the secretary, "that is precisely the kind of child this house is intended for."

But when I went on to say that I assumed they still observed the wish of the founder that no questions of any kind should be asked about a child's birth or parentage, he said no, they had altered all that. Then he proceeded to explain that before a child could be received the mother must now go before a committee of gentlemen to satisfy them of her previous good character, and that the father of her baby had deserted both of them.

More than that, he told me that on being received the child was immediately re-registered and given a new name, in order that it might be cut off from the sin of its parents and the contamination of their shame.

It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with which I listened to the secretary while he said all this, with the cast-metal face of a man who was utterly unconscious of the enormity of the crime he was describing.

"Before a committee of gentlemen?" I asked.

"That is so."

"Who are to ask her all those questions?"

"Yes."

"And then they are to change her baby's name?"

"Yes."

"Is she told what the new name is to be?"

"No, but she is given a piece of parchment containing a number which corresponds with the name in our books."

I rose to my feet, flushing up to the eyes I think, trembling from head to foot I know, and, forgetting who and what I was and why I was there--a poor, helpless, penniless being seeking shelter for her child--I burst out on the man in all the mad wrath of outraged motherhood.

"And you call this a Christian institution!" I said. "You take a poor woman in her hour of trouble and torture her with an inquisition into the most secret facts of her life, in public, and before a committee of men. And then you take her child, and so far as she is concerned you bury it, and give her a ticket to its grave. A hospital? This is no hospital. It is a cemetery. And yet you dare to write over your gates the words of our Lord--our holy and loving and blessed Lord--who said, 'Suffer little children... .'"

But what is the use of repeating what I said then (perhaps unjustly) or afterwards in the silence of my own room and the helpless intoxication of my rage?

It was soon stamped out of me.

By the end of another week I was driven to such despair by the continued extortions of the Olivers that, seeing an advertisement in the Underground Railway of a Home for children in the country (asking for subscriptions and showing a group of happy little people playing under a chestnut-tree in bloom), I decided to make one more effort.

"They can't all be machines," I thought, "with the founders' hearts crushed out of them."

The day was Friday, when work was apt to heap up at the Jew's, and Mrs.

Abramovitch had brought vests enough to my room to cover my bed, but nevertheless I put on my hat and coat and set out for the orphanage.

It was fifteen miles on the north side of London, so it cost me something to get there. But I was encouraged by the homelike appearance of the place when I reached it, and still more by finding that it was conducted by women, for at last, I thought, the woman-soul would speak to me.

But hardly had I told my story to the matron, repeating my request (very timidly this time and with such a humble, humble heart) that I might be allowed to recover my child as soon as I found myself able to provide for her, than she stopped me and said:

"My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in London on your terms. Before we accept such a child as yours we expect the parent to give us a legal undertaking that she relinquishes all rights in it until it is sixteen years of age."

"Sixteen? Isn't that rather severe on a mother?" I said.

"Justly severe," said the matron. "Such women should be made to maintain their children, and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard."

How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or what happened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on me, within and without), I do not know. I only know that very late that night, as late as eleven o'clock, I was turning out of Park Lane into Piccadilly, where the poor "public women" with their painted faces, dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists, were promenading in front of the gentlemen's clubs and smiling up at the windows.

These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I was suddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself thinking that among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might be some who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and who loved them.

This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringing laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of steps talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneath their overcoats showed that they were in evening dress.

Her laughter was not natural. It had no joy in it, yet she laughed and laughed, and feeling as if I _knew_ (because life had that day trampled on me also), I said to myself:

"That woman's heart is dead."

This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a side glimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not fix.

"Where and when have I seen that woman's face before?" I thought.

It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere. But the woman's resemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her joyless laughter, compelled me to stop at the next corner and look back.

By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O God, how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming arm-in-arm in my direction, with their silk hats tilted a little back, were saying:

"Poor old Aggie! She's off!" "Completely off!" "Is it drink, I wonder?"

And then, seeing me, they said:

"Gad, here's a nice little gal, though!" "No rouge, neither!" "By Jove, no! Her face is as white as a waterlily!"

Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were going to speak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with the woman, who was standing where they had left her, silent now, and looking after the men with fierce eyes under the fair hair that curled over her forehead.

Then in a moment a memory from the far past swept over me, and I cried, almost as if the name had been forced out of me:

"Sister Angela!"

The woman started, and it seemed for a moment as if she were going to run away. Then she laid hold of me by the arm and, looking searchingly into my face, said:

"Who are you? ... I know. You are Mary O'Neill, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that ... that man. And now you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with me and see."