Mr. Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drew out a match-box.
He held a match to the candle, and in a moment or two a faint circle of
light fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow like
the heads of nocturnal animals.
"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle in
his hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stood
before a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay on
it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen
across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying
where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung
above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other
bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled
down about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up
unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.
"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulder of the others;
and the young man added: "I jus' come in and found her.
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