When she came to Fleet Street, and was at the point where the narrow street in which the office was situated branches from the great thoroughfare, she stood still again, while she put her hand in her pocket to bring out the letter.... It was not there! Her heart beat violently. She felt for it again--she brought out all the pocket's contents: an old thimble and a few other trifles--but no letter. As is the unreasoning custom of those who have lost anything, she searched over and over again in the same places, hoping against hope. At last she could deceive herself in this way no longer; she was convinced she had not got it--it was lost, and what was she to do now? A confused crowd of ideas rushed into the child's mind: what to do--to go to the office and tell her father what had happened? or to walk back the way she had come and see if she could find the letter on the road anywhere? or to run away for good and trust to chance? Her head swam and her heart beat when this last plan suggested itself to her, this grand and vague temptation--to run away--to have liberty, entire liberty--never to go back to that cruel house in Brixton. Oh, the delight, the mystery of it! She was a brave girl, and to be cast adrift on the world did not terrify her much. This pluck was not due to childish ignorance; for she knew well how hopeless were the prospects of one in her situation, how cruel were the streets of the great city. Her brain was in a whirl. Anyhow she would put off the evil moment, she said to herself; she would not decide at once, she would think the matter over. So she walked away towards the bridge again. Then in her uncertainty she came back once more, and hardly knowing what she did went up Fleet Street, up the Strand, and reached Trafalgar Square. In her perplexity she stood for a few seconds gazing at the fountains glittering in the sun. Then all of a sudden, in that great open place, the passion of freedom so filled her soul, that it drove before it all other considerations. Her wavering mind yielded at once, having no more power to hesitate or reason. She stamped her foot on the stone pavement, and cried aloud, "I shall not go back--never--never again--it is all over now." Thus she decided to try the world, to throw herself on chance, they could not be crueller than home. If all failed was there not the river? She had read in the papers of poor women leaping in it when all hope was over--"No, she would not go home." Now that her mind was quite made up, so strange and delightful a sense of freedom, of adventure, filled that young soul that she could have shouted for joy. She felt no care for the morrow, not she--this new liberty quenched for the moment all other ideas and fears. "And where to go to now?" she thought. "Where seek employment?"