But even in the shadows and silent places lurk the mysteries of humanity. The lords of life and death look down upon a drama that is played. The sentinel stars keep watch over a battlefield strewn with the victims of the human conflict.
The palatial hostelries of wealth that glow with lights far into the night are divided but by a few yards from the silent river, on which gleam here and there the dull red lamps of black barges and vessels moored at the wharves or anchored in the stream.
But between the gilded guest-houses of the wealthy and the river freighted with the world's wealth there lie scattered heaps of human wreckage.
Walk along the Embankment in the dead of night, and you will see the outcasts lying huddled together in corners of the stonework, sometimes reaching in lines of misery almost to the last step by the water's edge.
Every seat is occupied by homeless men and women, tramps and tatterdemalions of both sexes, who are camping out because they have not the money for a bed, and prefer the canopy of heaven to the ceiling of the refuge or the casual ward.
Every now and then a policeman passes, creeping along in silent shoes that give no warning of his approach, and as he flashes his lantern on the faces of the sleepers you can see that they are young and old and middle-aged men and women who have gone under, and men and women who were born under and never tried to rise.
There is no mystery about the bulk of them, but now and again amid the herd of hapless ones you will find traces of refinement and intelligence; the look of despair may be in the sunken eyes raised to yours from a row of brutal and sinister faces.
From one of these dormitories of the desolate a woman rose wearily one night as the dawn was breaking, and, climbing the parapet, dropped into the river.
She was rescued and charged with attempting to commit suicide. The magistrate, struck by the refinement of the poor creature's voice and manner, asked the police-court missionary to see her.
To the missionary the homeless, penniless woman who had staggered in the dawn from a seat on the Embankment to end her misery in the merciful river confided her story. He took her to his own home and sought her friends. They had not seen her for years, and were ignorant of her fate. Her story was as old as the first love tragedy—a woman's faith and a man's treachery, and then the shame that hides itself away from all who knew and cared.