At
one moment I felt--as palpably as I felt it, on the betrothal
night--her slim figure, soft as a twine of flowers in my arms: at the
next I was clasping a corpse--a rigid corpse in rags. And yet I can
scarcely say that I had any thoughts. At Great Queen Street I
dismissed the cab, and had some little difficulty in finding Primrose
Court, a miserable narrow alley. I knocked at a door which, even in
that light, I could see was a peculiarly wretched one. After a
considerable delay the door was opened and a face peered out--the
face of the woman whom I had seen in Cyril's studio. She did not at
first seem to recognise me. She was evidently far gone in liquor, and
looked at me, murmuring, 'You're one o' the cussed body-snatchers; I
know you: you belong to the Rose Alley "Forty Thieves." You'll
swing--every man Jack o' ye'll swing yet, mind if you don't.'
At the sight of the squalid house in which Winifred had lived and
died I passed into a new world of horror. Dead matter had become
conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before
me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of
brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the
walls,--it was these which seemed to have life--a terrible life--and
to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the
triumph of evil over good.
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