eleven o'clock
`` Justly severe , '' said the matron . `` Such women should be made to maintain their children , and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard . '' How I got back to London , whether by rail or tram or on foot , or what happened on the way -LRB- except that darkness was settling down on me , within and without -RRB- , I do not know . I only know that very late that night , as late as eleven o'clock , I was turning out of Park Lane into Piccadilly , where the poor `` public women '' with their painted faces , dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists , were promenading in front of the gentlemen 's clubs and smiling up at the windows . These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me ; but now I was suddenly surprised by a different feeling , and found myself thinking that among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might be some who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and who loved them . This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringing laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of steps talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneath their overcoats showed that they were in evening dress . Her laughter was not natural .