“Missy! Missy!” called the man as I passed. I made no answer. He turned and drove after me, walking the horse by my side as I pressed on in the rain. “Missy! Listen. I’m a poor man with a large family, and that gent is a well-known fare of mine so I did not like to go against him. But I didn’t half like the job. It went against my conscience a bit, it did, seeing you so unwilling inside. After I left you, when I’d got well away, who should I see but the gent dashing round a corner in another hansom, with a bad sort of look on him, and, dashed if I could go on, for thinking of the helpless looking young thing I left with him in the rain. So back I came again, just to see what had become of you. And now, Missy, if I can make up to you by driving you anywhere, say the word and jump in, and there you shall go.” So lost and wretched did I feel, and so consuming was my desire to get home, I could not refuse the offer. The man helped to bring about my misery, but, if I sent him away now, where should I go, what should I do, in this great unknown city? I climbed in, feeling utterly spent. “Where to?” asked the man, peering down through the now horribly familiar trap-door. “Oh, take me home, take me home!” I half moaned in answer. “Yes, Missy, don’t you fret, I’ll take you home. But where is it?” “On Wildacre Common.” “Phew! That’s a long way off. I can’t drive you to Wildacre, but I’ll drive you to Waterloo, and you’ll get a train there easy that’ll take you straight to Wildacre.” He flicked his whip and started. I do not know what streets we passed through, but again I seemed to drive through miles and miles of them. The rain poured down upon the pavements, which shone in murky glossiness beneath the gas-lamps. The people flitted past like black ghosts, beneath the shade of their dripping umbrellas. This was the gay city, the city of my dreams. I had envied Felix his life in this city; I had risked my life’s happiness to spend one day in it. And, behold! its pleasures had turned to ashes in my mouth, and its light into horrible murky darkness. It was a miserable city, a terrible city, a city that made one feel fearfully, utterly alone.