Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/259

 grimy clothes after having received their pay; soldiers and loiterers; factory girls with yellow faces, their hair combed over their brows; prattling domestics vociferate around the water basin; women, with their pale babes in their arms, are standing at the doors of the houses, conversing in shrill voices; in the basement taverns the gaslight, subdued through the red curtains, already flickers, and here and there are heard the sounds of the accordion. The pulse of life is beating strong.

Lucy stopped At a corner rose a freshly whitewashed house; it towered by a whole story above the red roofs of its neighbors. The blinds were drawn in all the windows; a dead silence pervaded the place,—she recognized it

She had only a few hundred steps more to go before she would reach the water Her legs were powerless and began to tremble, and her blood boiled furiously. Red circles flitted before her eyes and swam up-