I agreed with him silently. I suppose affections are, in a sense, to be

learned. If there exists a native spark of love in all of us, it must be

fanned while we are young. Hers, if she ever had it, had been drenched

in as ugly a lot of corrosive liquid as could be imagined. But I was

surprised at Fyne obscurely feeling this.

"She loves no one except that preposterous advertising shark," he pursued

venomously, but in a more deliberate manner. "And Anthony knows it."

"Does he?" I said doubtfully.

"She's quite capable of having told him herself," affirmed Fyne, with

amazing insight. "But whether or no, I've told him."

"You did? From Mrs. Fyne, of course."

Fyne only blinked owlishly at this piece of my insight.

"And how did Captain Anthony receive this interesting information?" I

asked further.

"Most improperly," said Fyne, who really was in a state in which he

didn't mind what he blurted out. "He isn't himself. He begged me to

tell his sister that he offered no remarks on her conduct. Very improper

and inconsequent. He said . . . I was tired of this wrangling. I told

him I made allowances for the state of excitement he was in."

"You know, Fyne," I said, "a man in jail seems to me such an incredible,

cruel, nightmarish sort of thing that I can hardly believe in his

existence. Certainly not in relation to any other existences."

"But dash it all," cried Fyne, "he isn't shut up for life. They are

going to let him out. He's coming out! That's the whole trouble. What

is he coming out to, I want to know? It seems a more cruel business than

the shutting him up was. This has been the worry for weeks. Do you see

now?"

I saw, all sorts of things! Immediately before me I saw the excitement

of little Fyne--mere food for wonder. Further off, in a sort of gloom

and beyond the light of day and the movement of the street, I saw the

figure of a man, stiff like a ramrod, moving with small steps, a slight

girlish figure by his side. And the gloom was like the gloom of

villainous slums, of misery, of wretchedness, of a starved and degraded

existence. It was a relief that I could see only their shabby hopeless

backs. He was an awful ghost. But indeed to call him a ghost was only a

refinement of polite speech, and a manner of concealing one's terror of

such things. Prisons are wonderful contrivances. Shut--open. Very

neat. Shut--open. And out comes some sort of corpse, to wander awfully

in a world in which it has no possible connections and carrying with it

the appalling tainted atmosphere of its silent abode. Marvellous

arrangement. It works automatically, and, when you look at it, the

perfection makes you sick; which for a mere mechanism is no mean triumph.

Sick and scared. It had nearly scared that poor girl to her death. Fancy

having to take such a thing by the hand! Now I understood the remorseful

strain I had detected in her speeches.




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