She curled herself up more compactly under the covers, and continued in a blunter tone. “It’s easy to say that--at the bottom; but really there’s no such thing. There’s a lower depth under every depth; and there ain’t no words to tell you how it is down there. No one can imagine it who hasn’t been there. No seeing from the outside and no knowing will make people realize it. You live in a place for which they charge you five times as much as is fair and decent. You’re common property, and everybody gets out of you all he can. You don’t care if the place is elegant or like a pigsty. It gives you the horrors to open the door of it. It ain’t yours; it’s everybody’s. It’s the place where everybody sort of sheds his filth, and you know them all and remember them all. It does you no good to go to bed and try to sleep. Another day is bound to come. There are the same greasy public houses and the same faces, always the same crowd. And then there’s the street--what you call your territory. That’s where you go by night. You know every window and crossing and lantern: you stare and turn and ogle and grin, and open your umbrella if it rains, and walk and stand around and keep a sharp eye on the police, and make up to any man if he’s got torn shoes or sports a fur ulster. And then you promise him God knows what; and all the time you’d like to scratch his heart out if he walks off, or spit in his face if he condescends to you. There it is! That’s the main thing. Pain and worry--Lord, all people have them. But what you get to find out about men there--oh, I tell you!” Her last words were a cry again, a great cry, such as that other cry which Christian had not been able to forget. He sat very straight, and looked past the lamp to a certain spot on the wall.