I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always seen it in my mind's eye—not a pretentious place at all, only a little humble cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and perhaps with roses.
I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn sharply to the left. Then opening my eyes I saw that we were running down a kind of alley-way, with a row of very mean little two-storey houses on the one side, and on the other, a kind of waste ground strewn with broken bottles, broken iron pans, broken earthenware and other refuse, interspersed with tufts of long scraggy grass, which looked the more wretched because the sinking sun was glistening over it.
Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped. Then the old man jumped from his box and opening his cab door, said:
"Here you are, missie. This is your destingnation."
There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I got out of the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I was standing on a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which bore the number 10.
At first I was stunned. Then my heart was in my mouth and it was as much as I could do not to burst out crying. Finally I wanted to fly, and I turned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already passing round the corner.
It was six o'clock. I was very tired. I was nine miles from Bayswater. I could not possibly carry baby back. What could I do?
Then, my brain being unable to think, a mystic feeling (born perhaps of my life in the convent) came over me—a feeling that all that had happened on my long journey, all I had seen and everything that had been said to me, had been intended to prepare me for (and perhaps to save me from) the dangers that were to come.
I think that gave me a certain courage, for with what strength of body and spirit I had left (though my heart was in my mouth still) I stepped across the pavement and knocked at the door.
MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD