On reaching the Bank we dismissed the hansom and proceeded to walk to
Ratcliffe Highway. Before reaching it I was appalled at the
forbidding aspect of the neighbourhood. It was not merely that the
unsavoury character of the streets offended and disgusted me, but the
locality wore a sinister aspect which acted upon my imagination in
the strangest, wildest way. Why was it that this aspect fairly cowed
me, scared me? I felt that I was not frightened on my own account,
and yet when I asked myself why I was frightened I could not find a
rational answer.
As I saw the sailors come noisily from their boarding-houses; as I
saw the loafers standing at the street corners, smoking their dirty
pipes and gazing at us; as I saw the tawdry girls, bare-headed or in
flaunting hats covered with garish flowers, my thoughts, for no
conceivable reason, ran upon Winnie more persistently than they had
run upon her since I had abandoned all hope of seeing her in Wales.
The thought came to me that, grievous as was her fate and mine, the
tragedy of our lives might have been still worse.
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