A week later Celia was crouching over her fireless grate.

The Wolf was no longer outside the door, but beside her, his red eyes watching her balefully, his cruel teeth showing between his mowing jaws.

The hunger, for which the overfed rich man longs in vain, was gnawing at her; she was penniless and well-nigh starving; no longer did she regard the little chorus girl in the floor below her with tender pity and sympathy, but with envy; she knew now how rich she had been with her pound a week.
For days she had tramped the streets, in the intervals of reading the advertisements in the free library, in search of some employment, any employment, which a woman could take up; and her last few pence had been spent in one of those advertisements which tell their own tale of despair.

She was willing to do anything; she would have taken a situation as a housemaid; would have gone out charing; for life is precious to all of us, and scruples of refinement disappear when there is no bread in the cupboard.

But her applications, for even the lowliest place, were turned down; she had no experience, no character; the persons she interviewed saw, at a glance, that she was a lady, and that was fatal: a lady willing to sink to the position of a housemaid--well, there is something suspicious in it.
As she sat, with her hands tightly clasped, the cold of the early, so-called, summer day chilling her to the marrow, she was cheerfully employed in picturing her death; the discovery of the body, the coroner's inquest, the leader which would be written in the _Wire_, the properly indignant, stereotyped leader, dwelling with righteous indignation on the "terrible poverty in our midst." She raised her head and looked round the room.