George Gissing - The Nether World

'Clara, come home before it is too late! Come with me—now—come at once? Thank heaven you have got out of that place! Come home, and stay there quietly till we can find you something better.'

'I'll die rather than go home!' was her answer, flung at him as if in hatred. 'Tell my father that, and tell him anything else you like. I want no one to take any thought for me; and I wouldn't do as you wish, not to save my soul!'

How often, in passing along the streets, one catches a few phrases of discord such as this! The poor can seldom command privacy; their scenes alike of tenderness and of anger must for the most part be enacted on the peopled ways. It is one of their misfortunes, one of the many necessities which blunt feeling, which balk reconciliation, which enhance the risks of dialogue at best semi-articulate.

Clara, having uttered the rancour which had so long poisoned her mind, straightway crossed the street and entered the house where she was lodging. She had just returned from making several applications for employment—futile, as so many were likely to be, if she persevered in her search for a better place than the last. The wages due to her for the present week she had of course sacrificed; her purchases of clothing—essential and superfluous—had left only a small sum out of her earnings. Food, fortunately, would cost her little; the difficulty, indeed, was to eat anything at all.

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