To me the sun above was but the hideous
eye of Circumstance which had stared down pitilessly on that bare
head of hers, and blistered those feet.
The lamps at night seemed twinkling, blinking in a callous
consciousness of my tragedy--my monstrous tragedy of real life, the
like of which no poet dare imagine. But what aroused my wrath to an
unbearable pitch--what determined me to leave London at once--was the
sight of the unsympathetic faces in the streets. Though sympathy
could have given me no comfort, the myriad unsympathetic eyes of
London infuriated me.
'Died in beggar's rags--died in a hovel!' I muttered with rage as the
equipages and coarse splendours of the West End rolled insolently by.
'Died in a hovel!--and this London, this vast, ridiculous, swarming
human ant-hill, whose millions of paltry humdrum lives were not worth
one breath from those lips--this London spurned her, left her to
perish alone in her squalor and misery.'
Cyril and Wilderspin had returned to the Continent. D'Arcy was still
away.
I made application to the Home Secretary to have the pauper grave
opened.
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