Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/309

 given much to be rid of it; and yet, again, might she not legitimately accept that pleasure which at times came of the thought?—the thought that, as a woman, her qualities were of some account in the world.

She did her best to keep it out of her consciousness, and in truth had so many other things to think about that it was seldom she really had trouble with it. Life was not altogether easy; regular work was not always to be kept; there was much need of planning and pinching, that her independence might suffer no wound. Bessie Byass was always in arms against that same independent spirit; she scoffed at it, assailed it with treacherous blandishment, made direct attacks upon it.

“I must live in my own way, Mrs. Byass. I don’t want to have to leave you.”

And if ever life seemed a little too hard, if the image of the past grew too mournfully persistent, she knew where to go for consolation. Let us follow her, one Saturday afternoon early in the year.

In a poor street in Clerkenwell was a certain poor little shop,—built out as an afterthought from an irregular lump of houses; a shop with