lexandra rose and took him by the hand.
"Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get you
pardoned. I'll never give the Governor any peace. I know I can
get you out of this place."
Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from
her face. "Alexandra," he said earnestly, "if I git out-a here,
I not trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from;
see my mother."
Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it
nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button
on her black jacket. "Alexandra," he said in a low tone, looking
steadily at the button, "you ain' t'ink I use dat girl awful bad
before--"
"No, Frank. We won't talk about that," Alexandra said, pressing
his hand. "I can't help Emil now, so I'm going to do what I can
for you. You know I don't go away from home often, and I came up
here on purpose to tell you this."
The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexandra
nodded, and he came in and touched the white button on his desk.
The guard appeared, and with a sinking heart Alexandra saw Frank
led away down the corridor. After a few words with Mr. Schwartz,
she left the prison and made her way to the street-car. She had
refused with horror the warden's cordial invitation to "go through
the institution." As the car lurched over its uneven roadbed, back
toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought of how she and Frank had been
wrecked by the same storm and of how, although she could come out
into the sunlight, she had not much more left in her life than
he. She remembered some lines from a poem she had liked in her
schooldays:--
Henceforth the world will only be
A wider prison-house to me,--
and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some such
feeling as had twice frozen Frank Shabata's features while they
talked together. She wished she were back on the Divide.
When Alexandra entered her hotel, the clerk held up one finger
and beckoned to her. As she approached his desk, he handed her a
telegram. Alexandra took the yellow envelope and looked at it in
perplexity, then stepped into the elevator without opening it. As
she walked down the corridor toward her room, she reflected that
she was, in a manner, immune from evil tidings. On reaching her
room she locked the door, and sitting down on a chair by the dresser,
opened the telegram. It was from Hanover, and it read:--
Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here
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