"But you--you never served the sentence--such a vindictive sentence, too!"
"Yes, I did." For the first time her face changed, a hint of tragedy appeared in her studiously passionless eyes. "You look surprised, but I assure you it is true. I served my sentence, and came out of prison exactly eight weeks ago."
"Eight weeks? But you have only just come here?"
"Yes. First I went down into Kent to stay with an old family friend who had taken charge of Cherry--my little girl--while I was"--she hesitated, then spoke with a directness he felt to be brutal--"in prison. I only came here yesterday, and I suppose the shock of finding myself back in my happy home"--he was sure she was speaking ironically now--"was too much for my--nerves."
"But, Mrs. Carstairs"--he looked down at her with perplexity in his face--"do I understand you to mean you have deliberately come back to live in the place which has treated you so shamefully?"
"Why not?" Her long, blue eyes were inscrutable. "I'm not ashamed of coming back. You see, I really don't care in the very least what these people say about me. I don't even bear them malice. Prison life is supposed to make one bitter, isn't it? You hear a lot about the 'prison taint,' whatever that may be. Well, I don't feel conscious of having sustained any taint. I have suffered a great wrong"--her contralto voice was quite unmoved as she made the assertion--"a very grievous injustice has been done to me; but now that the physical unpleasantness of the ordeal is over I don't feel as though I--my ego, my soul, if you like--had undergone any particular degradation."
"I suppose"--the question was forced from him by his interest in the human document she was spreading before his eyes--"I suppose what you call the physical unpleasantness is really hard to bear?"
He was sorry he had put the question as he saw the slow shudder which for a moment convulsed her immobility.
"Yes." For a second her voice was almost passionate. "I don't think I could make you understand the horror of that side of imprisonment. Most prison reformers, as I say, prate of the injury done to the soul of the prisoner. For my part--it if were worth while, which it isn't--I would always refuse to forgive those enemies who subjected my body to such indignities."