It was poverty--grinding, sordid, squalid poverty. From the one dishevelled, slatternly, middle-aged servant to the cheap paper peeling off the wall in the bedrooms, all she had seen was poverty. The gathering terror of it burst like a thunderstorm above her head. Her courage failed her utterly. Like a creature distracted, she rushed downstairs and fled from the house. She walked homewards with an instinctive sense of direction. Afterwards she had little memory of the portion of the road she traversed on foot. She moved in a shuddering nightmare. All the love in the world could not shed a glamour over the nakedness of the existence that had now been revealed to her in its entire crudity. She could not face it. Other women of gentle birth had forsaken all and followed the men they loved; they had loved peasants and had led great-heartedly the peasant's life. They had qualities of soul that she lacked. Hideously base, despicably cowardly she knew herself to be. It was her nature. She could not alter. The world of graceful living was her world. In the other she would die. He had warned her. The gipsy faith in Providence had made him regard as a jest what would be to her a sordid shift, an intolerable ugliness, stripping life of its beauty. The passion-flower could not thrive in the hedge with the dog-rose. It was true--mercilessly true. The craving of last night awoke afresh, imperiously insistent. She walked blindly, tripped, and nearly fell. A subconscious self hailed a passing hansom and gave the address.
What would become of her she knew not. She thought wildly of suicide as the only possible escape. From her own world she was outcast. Its gates were barred with gold and opened but to golden keys. She was penniless. In this other world she would die. Love could not prevent her starving on its diet of herbs. She clung to life, to the stalled ox, and recked little of the hatred; but at the banquet she no longer had a seat. She had said she would follow him in rags and barefoot over the earth. She had not fingered the rags when she had made the senseless vow; she had not tried her tender feet on the stones. She could have shrieked with terror at the prospect. There was no way out but death.