Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot
With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth
Beyond those doors, ’Twas natural, of course,
She should not ask me where I meant to sleep;
I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,
Like others of my sort; the bed was laid
For us. By any woman, womanly,
Had thought of him who should be in a month,
The sinless babe that should be in a month,
And if by chance he might be warmer housed
Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.’

I broke on Marian there. ‘Yet she herself,
A wife, I think, had scandals of her own,
A lover, not her husband.’
⁠‘Ay,’ she said
‘But gold and meal are measured otherwise;
I learnt so much at school,’ said Marian Erle.

‘O crooked world,’ I cried, ‘ridiculous
If not so lamentable! It’s the way
With these light women of a thrifty vice,
My Marian,—always hard upon the rent
In any sister’s virtue! while they keep
Their chastity so darned with perfidy,
That, though a rag itself, it looks as well
Across a street, in balcony or coach,
As any stronger stuff might. For my part,
I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews