Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/260

 altogether, but her character and circumstances made it perilous for her to live thus alone.

“What does she really wish for?” inquired Snowdon, when there had been a short silence.

“She doesn’t know, poor girl! Eveiything in the life she has been living is hateful to her,—everything since she left school. She can’t rest in the position to which she was born; she aims at an impossible change of circumstances. It comes from her father; she can’t help rebelling against what seem to her unjust restraints. But what’s to come of it? She may perhaps get a place in a large restaurant,—and what does that mean?”

He broke off, but in a moment resumed even more passionately.

“What a vile, cursed world this is, where you may see men and women perish before your eyes, and no more chance of saving them than if they were going down in midocean! She’s only a child,—only just seventeen,—and already she’s gone through a lifetime of miseries. And I, like a fool, I’ve