She pictured it dark, cheerless, and cold, shuddered as she thought of the broad streak of moonlight which would come through the uncurtained window, and lie on that bare floor. How dark the corners of the room would be. So she wandered on, and the people grew scarcer and scarcer, and she grew fainter and fainter. She would have been glad of food now, but all the shops were shut, and when she came to Blackfriars' Bridge she was too tired to go any further. And as she stood and looked at the river gleaming in the moonlight, the question came into her mind.
'Need she go further? Was not this the fitting end for such as she?'
A spasm of madness caught her. What an easy way out of all her troubles; what an obvious solution of all her difficulties!
She walked straight before her, stooping to pass under the protecting pole in the middle of the road, falling once over a block of stone and cutting her hands, she thought. She climbed the tomb-like stones, and in a moment was on her hands and knees partly on the parapet and partly on some stones that leaned against it. She looked over without changing her attitude for quite a minute. It made her giddy to look down. She could not stand up, as she had pictured herself doing when that madness first came upon her.
She could drop over, though, and she would. Courage! In another minute it would all be over.
She had made a movement to turn her feet towards the water, when her shoulders were caught by two hands, and she was lifted bodily back on to the bridge.
'You little fool!' said the owner of the hands, which gave her a little shake before they loosened their hold of her. 'What do you want to go drinking of that poison for? It ain't fit to drown a cat in, let alone a human woman female.'
Alice's face was in her hands. She had sunk down against the stones on which she had climbed before. She shivered.
'Oh, I am so cold!' she said, almost in a whisper, without taking her hands away. The madness had died out of her completely.
'You'd have been colder if it hadn't been for me; and oh, the taste in your mouth would have been something dreadful. Come and have a drop of my missus's coffee, by my fire; it's a deal sweeter than wot you was after. The Government ought to take it up,' he said, sententiously, but whether he meant the river, the coffee, or the fire, he did not explain.