ever
spontaneity of speech she had had was gone. She was, Eleanor thought,
like a person using an unfamiliar tongue, aware of the difficulty of
putting thought into words.

She could not help being touched--and a little amused--at the
seriousness with which Lydia mentioned her late companions; Lydia, who
had always been so selective about her own friends and so scornful about
everybody else's. She spoke of Evans, the pallid little thief, as if
light had flowed from her as from an incarnation of the Buddha. Seeing
that Lydia had caught some reflection of the thought, Eleanor thought it
better to put it into words.

"Now, don't tell me, my dear," she said, "that you, too, have discovered
that all criminals are pure white souls."

"Just the opposite. All pure white souls are criminals--all of us are
criminals at heart. The only way not to be is to recognize the fact that
you are. It's a terrible idea at first--at least it was to me. It was
like going through death and coming out alive." Lydia paused, staring
before her, and anyone in the world except Eleanor would have thought
she had finished; but Eleanor's fine ear caught the beat of an
approaching idea. "But it's such a comfort, Nell, to belong to the
tribe--such a relief. And I should never have had it if it had not
been"--she hesitated, and Eleanor's heart contracted with a sudden fear
that the name of O'Bannon was about to enter--"if it had not been for my
accident."

Eleanor was not sure that Lydia had deliberately avoided the name. What,
she wondered, was left of that unjust and bitter hatred? She could not
detect a trace of bitterness anywhere in Lydia's nature to-night. But
then she had always had those moments of gentleness.

Presently Miss Bennett came in to say in her old, timid, suggestive
manner that it was late--she hated to interrupt them, but she really did
think that Lydia ought to go to bed. Lydia got up at once.

"I suppose I ought," she said. "It's been an exciting day for me."

Eleanor noted that such a suggestion from Miss Bennett in old days would
have meant that Lydia would have felt it her duty to stay up another
hour.

"I have to, my dear," she would have said, "or else Benny would be
trying to coerce me in every detail of my life."

CHAPTER XVI

The next morning at the regular prison hour Lydia woke with a start. She
had been aware for some time of a strange unaccountable roaring in her
ears. She looked about her, surprised