"No--no relations."
"And no friends?"
"No--no friends."
"Poor child!"
"You mustn't talk like that, or I sha'n't be able to go on, and I want to go straight on. I wasn't yet eighteen. There wasn't anything to be done in the country--we had lived quite out of the world--so I went to London. I was strange to London; but I thought I should have more chance there than in Scarsdale, so I went. But, when I got there, I soon found that I wasn't much better off than before, I'm not sure I wasn't worse. It was so lonely and so--so strange. My money went so fast, I began to be afraid, there seemed to be no means of earning more--I didn't know what to do. Then I saw an advertisement in a paper, of a shop where they wanted models in the costume department; they had to be tall and of good appearance. I didn't know what the advertisement meant; but I thought I was that, so I went, and they engaged me. I was to have board and lodging, and a few shillings a week. It was horrible. I had to keep putting on new dresses, and walk up and down in them in front of strange women, and sometimes men, and show them off. I had always been used to the open air, and to solitude; sometimes I thought I was going mad. Then the food was bad--at least, I thought it was bad--and, there were all sorts of things. But I had come so close to my last few shillings--and been so afraid--that I didn't dare to leave. There was one girl, who was also a model, whom I almost trusted; now that I look back I know that I never did quite. I used to walk about with her in the streets; I couldn't walk about alone, and there was nowhere else to walk, and I had to have some fresh air. She introduced me to a friend of hers--a man. She said he was a gentleman, but I knew better than that. She made out that he was very rich, and everything he ought to be. Directly he was introduced he began to make love. I so hated being a model; and I saw no prospect of doing anything else, and--besides, I wasn't well--I wasn't myself the whole of the time. She laughed when I said I didn't like him, and, therefore, couldn't be his wife. She declared that I was throwing away the best chance a girl in my position ever had; and said he would make the most perfect husband I could possibly want. He promised all sorts of things; he said we should live in the country, he even took me to see a house which he said he had taken. I grew to hate being a model more and more; I was miserable and ill, and they all made fun of me. At last, after he had asked me I don't know how many times, I said yes. We were married. We went to Margate for our honeymoon. Within four-and-twenty hours I knew what kind of a man he was."
She stopped; putting her hands up before her face. He could see her trembling in the moonlight, and could only stand and watch. He dared not trust himself to speak.
Presently she went on.
"I lived with him twelve months."
"Twelve months!"
"When I think of it now I wonder why I didn't kill him. I had chances, but I daren't even run away. All the life had gone out of me, and all the spirit too. I didn't even try to defend myself when he struck me."