for seeking her friends than from any unkindness: "Me and my husband
can't go on keepin' you, you know, my dear, however well's our meaning."
Emilia drew the woman toward her with both her lands, softly shaking her
head. She left the house about noon.

It was now her belief that she had probably no more than another day to
live, for she was destitute of money. The thought relieved her from that
dreadful fear of the street, and she walked at her own pace, even after
dark. The rumble and the rattle of wheels; the cries and grinding
noises; the hum of motion and talk; all under the lingering smoky red of
a London Winter sunset, were not discord to her animated blood. Her
unhunted spirit made a music of them. It was not like the music of other
days, nor was the exultation it created at all like happiness: but she at
least forgot herself. Voices came in her ear, and hung unheard until
long after the speaker had passed. Hunger did not assail her. She was
not beset by an animal weakness; and having in her mind no image of
death, and with her ties to life cut away;--thus devoid of apprehension
or regret, she was what her quick blood made her, for the time. She
recognized that, for one near extinction, it was useless to love or to
hate: so Wilfrid and Lady Charlotte were spared. Emilia thought of them
both with a sort of equanimity; not that any clear thought filled her
brain through that delirious night. The intoxicating music raged there
at one level depression, never rising any scale, never undulating ever so
little, scarcely changing its barbarous monotony of notes. She had no
power over it. Her critical judgement would at another moment have
shrieked at it. She was moved by it as by a mechanical force.

The South-west wind blew, and the hours of the night were not evil to
outcasts. Emilia saw many lying about, getting rest where they might.
She hurried her eye pityingly over little children, but the devil that