I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use struggling against the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I thought it) which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it conquered me.
"I must get money," I thought. "Unless I get money my child will die. I—must—get—money."
Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on my coat and fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins.
"Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver.
"I am going out. I'll be back in the morning," I answered.
And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again—my sweet child, my Isabel—I tore the street door open, and pulled it noisily behind me.
ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH CHAPTER
On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram, for though I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague memories of lights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric cars.
At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further fare) because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the lights in the shops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the edge of the pavement, where women with baskets on their arms were doing their Saturday night's shopping.