Love comes that way, and death; and the blow of sorrow; and the wrench of life's last bitter pang. Only life is slow; tedious and laggard with its burdens and its gleams.
He remembered in a moment; the pressure of the bars against his breast recalled him to his sad estate. He released her hand and fell back a step from her, a sharp cry on his lips as if he had seen her crushed and mangled just beyond his reach.
"I didn't mean to do that, Alice; I didn't mean to do that!" said he, dropping to his knees before her as if struck down by a stunning blow. He bowed his head in contrite humiliation.
There was no displeasure in her face as she stood panting before the barred door, her hands to her heaving breast, her head thrown back. Her lips were parted; there was a light of exaltation in her eyes, as of one who has felt the benediction of a great and lasting joy. She put her hand through the bars again, and touched his bowed head.
The sheriff's key sounded in the lock of the corridor gate.
Joe stood, weak and trembling. He felt as if he had, in the heat of some great passion, rashly risked life, and more than life; that he had only now dragged his battered body back to the narrow, precarious ledge from which he had leaped, and that safety was not his.
"I must go now," said she, soft and low and in steady voice. "Good-bye."
She gave him her hand, and he clung to it like a nestling fastening upon the last branch interposing between it and destruction.
"I forgot where I was," said he weakly, his shaken mind incapable of comprehending things as they were, his abasement over the breach that he had committed being so profound. She withdrew her hand. When it was gone out of his, he remembered how warm it was with the tide of her young body, and how soft for his own work-roughened fingers to meet and enfold.
"I must go now," said she again. Her feet sounded in the corridor as she ran away. A little way along she stopped. She was beyond his sight, but her voice sounded near him when she called back "Good-bye!"
She had not gone in anger nor displeasure, thought he, getting hand of his confused senses after a while, standing as she had left him, the flowers in his hand. Strangely exulting, strangely thrilling, mounting a moment like an eagle, plunging down now like a stone, Joe walked his cell.