The Fog Princes by Florence Warden

For months Deborah Audaer suffered from the horrible effect which the incidents of the visit to Rees had left upon her mind. London seemed to her the pestilential centre of all evil, physical and moral. The inky atmosphere, the black, gloomy streets, Rees Pennant's dingy room, the passage full of deserted, dirty houses, all contributed to form a ghastly background to the picture of evil in which Amos Goodhare, with his cynical stare, and Rees, with his bold, feverish eyes, formed the central figures.

That journey had shown her men and things from a new and hideous point of view. For a time all the sweetness and freshness of life seemed poisoned for her. She saw the ills in the world -- poverty, sin, and sorrow, in a harder, colder light. Since Rees whom she loved, could be corrupt and base, what in the wide world could be pure? So she reasoned, womanlike, and suffered in silence for the rest of the year, seeing a new and uglier sadness in the autumn and winter changes of nature, and brooding over her poor lost ideal.