Fanny sobbed bitterly, and dared not raise her eyes to Robert’s agitated countenance. The young man took two or three turns up and down the bar-room, and then he became a little calmer, and pausing near the table at which he had been sitting, threw a furtive glance towards the weeping Fanny. ‘And you have really fallen so low as your presence here seems to imply?’ said he, endeavoring to steady his voice, though it was low and tremulous, and his lips quivered as he spoke. ‘Imagine the worse, and you will know all,’ replied Fanny, in a broken and faltering voice. ‘I have wished a hundred times that I were at the bottom of the bay, but I cannot do it. I pray for death, that I may be spared further misery and sin, and yet I live.’ ‘Heaven have mercy on us all, for we have need of mercy!’ exclaimed Robert, in a tone which betrayed the emotion that he felt, and leaning with his elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands. He heard Fanny sobbing, but for some moments neither of them moved or spoke. Then he heard a slight rustling, and he removed his hands from his pale and agitated countenance, and slowly raised his head. Fanny was hurriedly leaving the room; it was her mantle brushing the door as she passed out, which he had heard. He sighed heavily, and then he dropped his head upon his hands again, and sat silent and motionless, until roused by the entrance of the bar-keeper who, thinking that he was asleep, shook him, and bawled that he was going to close the house. Then he arose, quitted the house, and walked slowly, and with an expression of misery and despair upon his pale countenance. The rain had now degenerated into a thick fog, through which the lamps twinkled dimly, and the pavement was covered with thin mire of the color and adhesive quality which distinguishes the mud of San Francisco, except where the broken condition of the pavement of the footway permitted the turbid water to lay in large puddles, dimly reflecting the street lamps. Regardless of the puddles, Robert walked on, now with his eyes fixed upon the miry pavement, and now looking forward with contracted brow and moving though silent lips; and when he reached a lane, he went straight on and entered a house. Thither we will not immediately follow him. On leaving the bar-room, where she had encountered Robert Jervis, Fanny had hurried down to the wharf, where she began to walk more slowly, the terrible excitement which had until then impelled her onward, beginning to subside. But though she walked more slowly, she kept towards the bay, and still walked slowly onwards. About the hour of one, she advanced towards steps leading down to some water. It was not the first time since she had added herself to the thousands of unfortunate women who seek the wages of sin, that she sought the bay with suicidal purposes, but there was something so terrible and so awful to her mind in the thought of death, that she had never dared to attempt the execution of it.