She was even more silent than her
laconic half-breed hired woman, Rada. There was no talk with her gloating
husband which was not monosyllabic. Her canary sang, but no music ever
broke from her own lips. She murmured over her lovely yellow companion;
she kissed it, pleaded with it for more song, but the only music at her
own lips was the occasional music of her voice; and it had a colourless
quality which, though gentle, had none of the eloquence and warmth of
youth.
In form and feature she was one made for emotion and demonstration, and
the passionate play of the innocent enterprises of wild youth; but there
was nothing of that in her. Gray age had drunk her life and had given her
nothing in return--neither companionship nor sympathy nor understanding;
only the hunger of a coarse manhood. Her obedience to the supreme will of
her jealous jailer gave no ground for scolding or reproach, and that
saved her much. She was even quietly cheerful, but it was only the pale
reflection of a lost youth which would have been buoyant and gallant, gay
and glad, had it been given the natural thing in the natural world.
There came a day, however, when the long, unchanging routine, gray with
prison grayness, was broken; when the round of household duties and the
prison discipline were interrupted. It was as sudden as a storm in the
tropics, as final and as fateful as birth or death.
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