“Aren’t you well?” I asked, and felt the utter feebleness of the words.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, “it’s the walking about, the walking about. Day after day, it’s always the same.”

And this is the sort of thing that goes on among the homeless. Walking about until the body aches and the mind becomes half doped. Is it any wonder that to get shelter at night the destitute do desperate things? This woman was not, I think, a prostitute, save at such times when self-preservation drove her to get money anyhow. I should say she had once been a shop assistant, or, perhaps, kept a lodging house. One seemed to trace her steady declension, slipping from room to room, at a cheaper and cheaper rent, and always leaving something behind, until at last, her whole wealth on her back, she is faced with destitution.