ept my cloak
about me, and stood a long time at my window, raising the sash a little to feel the
thin rain of the new year. At three o''clock there were still boats ringing their bells,
and men''s voices from the river, and boys running fast along
the Walk; but for a single moment as I watched, the clamour and the bustle died,
and then the morning was perfectly still. The rain was fine—too fine to spoil
the surface of the Thames, it shone like glass, and where the lamps of the
bridges and the water-stairs showed there were wriggling snakes of red and yellow
light. The pavements gleamed quite blue—like china plates.
I should never have guessed that that dark night could have had so many colours
in it.
Next day, while Mother was out, I went to Millbank, to Selina. They have
put her back upon the ordinary ward, and so now she has prison dinners again,
and wool to work at rather than coir—and her own matron Mrs Jelf, who is so
careful of her. I walked to her cell, remembering how it had once been a pleasure
to me to keep back my visit to her, to call onr other women first, and save the
gazing on her till I might gaze freely. Now, how can I keep from her? What is it to
me, what the other women think? I stopped at the gates of one or two of them and
wished them ''Happy New Year'', and shook their hands; but the ward seemed