ass of prisoner--the class
to which Eva Herrick belonged--imprisonment wakes only the worst and
basest of all emotions, a desire, perforce stifled during the period of
punishment, for revenge.

That she had suffered, on the whole, justly, never weighed for one
instant with Eva herself. That she had been guilty of a crime was less
than nothing. What did weigh with her was the fact that she had been
found out, and forced to undergo a humiliating and degrading punishment;
and from the moment when she came to her senses after the swoon which
had mercifully cut short the scene in court, Eva Herrick's whole being
had been in revolt against a world where such things were allowed to be.

Her whole pleasure, indeed, while in prison, had been found in planning
how, in the future, she could render miserable the life of the husband
who had not, so she considered, stood by her; and it was a bitter
disappointment to her to find that try as she might she could not
torture him to the breaking-point.

He met her most poisoned and bitter shafts with a patience which
nothing, it seemed, could pierce. When she taunted him, he only smiled;
and when she reviled him he left her presence; so that the only way in
which she could win any satisfaction was by detailing to him exaggerated
accounts of the treatment she had received in prison.

These stories, untrue and impossible as many of them were, made him
wince, not knowing indeed how cunning was the invention behind them; and
many times when she was more maddening than usual, Herrick schooled
himself to patience by reminding himself of the drastic punishments
which had apparently been meted out to her.

When at length she found that Jim was impervious to her stings, Eva
looked around her for another victim; and found one in the person of
Toni Rose.

It did not take Eva long to read, more or less correctly, the position
between Toni and her husband; and although she was quite shrewd enough
to realize that the situation would probably adjust itself in time, Eva
was determined to prevent any such adjustment with every weapon in her
power.

Unhappily it proved only too easy for a woman such as she was to direct
the affair pretty much as she willed it; and her suggestion to Toni that
she should leave her husband had been carefully led up to by scores of
insinuations, of carelessly-dropped hints, and scraps of repeated
conversations heard on the subject of the Roses' married life.

She was