“There is the workroom. You had best guard what you have made from moths. That is sufficient occupation surely for one who hitherto was too hard-worked.”
“It is a return to the life I led before I came here.”
“The information does not interest me. You live your life according to your own making. Go; I have no more to say to you.”
“I would I could appeal to some power without against this cruel sentence.”
“Oh! there is no power without. The world is too busy with its own affairs. You had best sink into silence gracefully. You have got past the age of screaming and past the age of tears. You have let go the only prisoner I set my mind on keeping, and need expect no mercy for it. Imbecile! Go!”
The words were accompanied by an action so indicative of savage irritation that Mariana, without further reply, turned to the door and left the room.
Daylight, unaccompanied by much warmth, had taken the place of twilight. The lights were out, and morning had begun.
Along the corridor into the central hall, with face all deathly white, she passed. She met Everard there. He had waited for her.
He read her untold story by her face, for she never said a word, and glided past him like a ghost in a painted picture toward the eastern wing.
The door swung open. Here no light had ever penetrated by night or day, save only the artificial glimmer and pale ghastliness.
Then at No. 13 she stopped, and opened the low-built door. She gave one hurried glance back to the big double door that shut her off from life, then passed into the damp, dark cell, and closed the door behind her.
No longer the work that filled with a certain pleasure the long hours of day. To sit there idle, without light, or companionship, or occupation—that was her doom now. And then, to give up that precious pleasure and intoxicating dream that came round once a week! She shuddered at the black thought.
Down she sat upon one wooden chair. And as she sat, the moths descended one by one about her. But when she sighed they flew far off again. The moths in flimsy clouds hovered above, and knew quite all too well their time had not come yet.
So there for the present we must leave her—stiff, rigid, and unmoving. Crushed down by pain and heaviness so great, she had no strength to move or cry.