ge to me, as if reflected in a sheet of buckling metal. ''Well, well, Miss Prior,''
she said—I am sure she said this. ''And are you back again, to see your own wicked
lamb?'' She took me to a door, then put her eye to its inspection slit, very slyly. Then
she worked at the lock, and at the bolt of the gate behind it. ''Go on, ma''am,'' she said
at last. ''She has been meek as anything since her spell in the darks.''
The cell that they have put her in is smaller than those on the ordinary wards,
and the iron louvres at its little window,
together with the mesh they put about the gas-jets, to keep the women from
the flames, make it desperately gloomy. There was no table and no chair: I
found her seated on the hardwood bed, hunched awkwardly over a tray of coir.
She put this aside when they opened the door to me, and attempted to
rise to her feet; then she swayed, and had to reach for the wall to steady herself.
They have taken the star from her sleeve and given her a gown that seemed too
large for her. Her cheeks were white, her temples and her lips shadowed with blue,
and on her forehead there was a yellow bruise. Her fingernails are split down to
the quick, from picking coir. Coir fibres dust her cap, her apron, her wrists, and
all her bedding.
When Mrs Pretty had closed the door and locked it, I took a step towards her. We