sonal kindness seemed to be founded on the
insulting knowledge of her utter helplessness. They chatted a little
with the guard who had brought her. Was the train late? Well, not as bad
as last time.

She wondered how soon they would cut her hair.

After a little while she was taken through a long corridor directly to a
spacious bathroom. Her clothes, wrapped in a sheet, were borne away. At
this Lydia gave a short laugh. It pleased her as a sign that the routine
in her case was palpably ridiculous--to take away her things as if they
were infected. She was given a bath, a nightgown of most unfriendly
texture was handed to her, and presently she was locked in her
cell--still in possession of her hair.

She felt like an animal in a trap--could imagine herself running along
the floor smelling at cracks for some hope of escape, with that strange
head motion, up and down, up and down, of a newly caged animal.

More even than the locks and bolts, she minded the open grille in the
door, like an eye through which she might at any moment of the day or
night be spied upon. At every footstep she prepared herself to meet with
a defiant stare the eyes of an inspector. The cell was hardly a cell,
but a room larger than most hall bedrooms. The bed had a white cover; so
had the table; and the window, though barred, was large. But this made
no impression on Lydia. She was conscious of being locked in. Only her
pride and her hard common sense kept her from beating at the door with
her bare hands and making one of those screaming outbreaks so familiar
to prison officials.

She who had never been coerced was now to be coerced in every action,
surrounded everywhere by symbols of coercion. She who had been so
intense an individualist that she had discarded a French model if she
saw other women wearing it was now to wear a striped gingham dress of
universal pattern. She whose competent white hands had never done a
piece of useful work was sentenced to not less than three or more than
seven years of hard labor. What would that be--hard labor? The vision of
that giant negro working hopelessly at his loom was before her all night
long.

All night long she wandered up and down her cell, now and then laying
her hand on the door to assure herself of the incredible fact that it
was locked. Only for a few minutes at dawn she fell asleep, forgetting
the catastrophe, the malignant fate that had overtaken her, and woke
imagining herself at home.