 upwards, upwards, lifeless eyes, murky openings
that tell of bareness, disorder, comfortlessness within. One is tempted to say
that Shooter's Gardens are a preferable abode. An inner courtyard, asphalted,
swept clean - looking up to the sky as from a prison. Acres of these edifices,
the tinge of grime declaring the relative dates of their erection; millions of
tons of brute brick and mortar, crushing the spirit as you gaze. Barracks, in
truth; housing for the army of industrialism, an army fighting with itself, rank
against rank, man against man, that the survivors may have whereon to feed. Pass
by in the night, and strain imagination to picture the weltering mass of human
weariness, of bestiality, of unmerited dolour, of hopeless hope, of crushed
surrender, tumbled together within those forbidding walls.
    Clara hated the place from her first hour in it. It seemed to her that the
air was poisoned with the odour of an unclean crowd. The yells of children at
play in the courtyard tortured her nerves; the regular sounds on the staircase,
day after day repeated at the same hours, incidents of the life of poverty,
irritated her sick brain and filled her with despair to think that as long as
she lived she could never hope to rise again above this world to which she was
born. Gone for ever, for ever, the promise that always gleamed before her whilst
she had youth and beauty and talent. With the one, she felt as though she had
been robbed of all three blessings; her twenty years were now a meaningless
figure; the energies of her mind could avail no more than an idiot's mummery.
For the author of her calamity she nourished no memory of hatred: her resentment
was against the fate which had cursed her existence from its beginning.
    For this she had dared everything, had made the supreme sacrifice.
Conscience had nothing to say to her, but she felt herself an outcast even among
these wretched toilers whose swarming aroused her disgust. Given the success
which had been all but in her grasp, and triumphant pride would have scored out
every misgiving as to the cost at which the victory had been won. Her pride was
unbroken; under the stress of anguish it became a scorn for goodness and
humility; but in the desolation of her future she read a punishment equal to the
daring wherewith she had aspired. Excepting her poor old father, not a living
soul that held account of her. She might live for years and years. Her father
would die, and then no smallest tribute of love or admiration would
