him, and yet she loved him now. Her
heart ached with a palpable weight of remorse. He had been her only
relation, and she had done nothing but fight and oppose and wound him.
What a cruel, stupid creature she had been--all her life! And now it was
too late. Her father was gone, so long ago she had almost forgotten him
in one aspect. And then again it would seem as if he must still be
somewhere, waiting to order her upstairs as he had when she was a child.

Only Benny was left--Benny whom she had so despised. Yet Benny would not
need to go to prison in order to learn to respect other people's rights.
Benny had been born knowing just what everyone else wanted--eager to get
all men their hearts' desire.

Lydia was not religious by temperament. She had now none of the joy of a
great revelation. But she had the courage, unsupported by any sense of a
higher power, to look at herself as she was. She saw now that her
relation to life had always been ugly, hostile, violent. Everyone who
had ever loved her had been able to love through something beautiful in
their own natures--in spite of all the unloveliness of hers. She thought
not only of the relations she had missed, like the relation to her
father, but of friendships she had lost, which she had deliberately
broken in the hideous daily struggle to get her own way. She would never
now renew that struggle. She had come in contact with something stronger
than herself, of which the impersonal power of the law was only a
visible symbol. She was not sure whether it had broken her or remade
her, but it had given her peace--happiness she had never had--a peace
which she believed she could preserve even when she went out of the
sheltering routine of prison. The only feature of life which terrified
and revolted her was the persisting individuality of Lydia Thorne. If
there were only a charm other than death to free you from yourself!
Sometimes she felt like a maniac chained to a mirror. Yet she knew that
it was the long months of enforced contemplations that had saved her.

On Friday evening the inmates were allowed to dance in the assembly
room--half theater, half chapel. In her effort to escape from herself
Lydia went once to watch, and came again and again with increasing
interest. It soon began to be rumored that she was a good dancer and
knew new steps. The dances became dancing classes. Lydia, except for her
natural impatience, was a born teacher, clear in her explanations and