"Surely my choice was the choice of a virtuous girl?
And yet the day when I returned to my needle was the fatal day of my life.
"I had now not only to provide for the wants of the passing hour—I had my debts to pay.
It was only to be done by toiling harder than ever, and by living more poorly than ever.
I soon paid the penalty, in my weakened state, of leading such a life as this.
One evening my head turned suddenly giddy; my heart throbbed frightfully.
I managed to open the window, and to let the fresh air into the room, and I felt better.
But I was not sufficiently recovered to be able to thread my needle.
I thought to myself,
'If I go out for half an hour, a little exercise may put me right again.'
I had not, as I suppose, been out more than ten minutes when the attack from which I had suffered in my room was renewed.
There was no shop near in which I could take refuge.
I tried to ring the bell of the nearest house door.
Before I could reach it I fainted in the street.
"How long hunger and weakness left me at the mercy of the first stranger who might pass by, it is impossible for me to say.
"When I partially recovered my senses I was conscious of being under shelter somewhere, and of having a wine-glass containing some cordial drink held to my lips by a man.
I managed to swallow—I don't know how little, or how much.
The stimulant had a very strange effect on me.
Reviving me at first, it ended in stupefying me.
I lost my senses once more.
"When I next recovered myself, the day was breaking.
I was in a bed in a strange room.
A nameless terror seized me.
I called out.
Three or four women came in, whose faces betrayed, even to my inexperienced eyes, the shameless infamy of their lives.
I started up in the bed. I implored them to tell me where I was, and what had happened—
"Spare me!
I can say no more.
Not long since you heard Miss Roseberry call me an outcast from the streets.
Now you know—as God is my judge I am speaking the truth!—now you know what made me an outcast, and in what measure I deserved my disgrace."
Her voice faltered, her resolution failed her, for the first time.
"Give me a few minutes," she said, in low, pleading tones.
"If I try to go on now, I am afraid I shall cry."
She took the chair which Julian had placed for her, turning her face aside so that neither of the men could see it.
One of her hands was pressed over her bosom, the other hung listlessly at her side.
Julian rose from the place that he had occupied.
Horace neither moved nor spoke.
His head was on his breast: the traces of tears on his cheeks owned mutely that she had touched his heart.
Would he forgive her?
Julian passed on, and approached Mercy's chair.
In silence he took the hand which hung at her side.
In silence he lifted it to his lips and kissed it, as her brother might have kissed it.
She started, but she never looked up.
Some strange fear of discovery seemed to possess her.
"Horace?" she whispered, timidly.
Julian made no reply.
He went back to his place, and allowed her to think it was Horace.
The sacrifice was immense enough—feeling toward her as he felt—to be worthy of the man who made it.
A few minutes had been all she asked for.
In a few minutes she turned toward them again.