though colorless, her
pallor was not that of ill health.

Her body resembled that of a sturdy child, straight in the back, wide in
the waist, and meager of bosom.

Her voice and her eyes subdued the beast in the men. An indefinable
personal quality ran through her utterance, a sadness, a sympathy, and
an intuitive comprehension of the sin of the world unusual in one so
young. She had been carefully reared: that was evident in every gesture
and utterance. Her dress was a studiously plain gray gown, not without a
little girlish ornament at the neck and bosom. Every detail of her
lovely personality entered Harold's mind and remained there. He had
hardly reached the analytic stage in matters of this kind, but he knew
very well that this girl was like her song; she could die but never
deceive. He wondered what her first name could be; no girl like that
would be called "Dot" or "Cad." It ought to be Lily or Marguerite. He
was glad to hear one of the girls call her Mary.

He gazed at her almost without ceasing, but as the other convicts did
the same he was not observably devoted, and whenever she raised her big,
clear eyes toward him both shrank, he from a sense of unworthiness, she
from the instinctive fear of men which a young girl of her type has
deep-planted within her. She studied him shyly when she dared, and after
the first song sang only for him. She prayed for him when the Band
knelt on the stone floor, and at night in her room she plead for him
before God.

The boy was smitten with a sudden sense of his crime, not in the way of
a repentant sinner, but as one who loves a sweet and gentle woman. All
that his father's preaching and precept could not do, all that the
judge, jury, and prison could not do, this slip of a girl did with a
glance of her big gray eyes and the tremor of her voice in song. All his
misdeeds arose up suddenly as a wall between him and the girl singer.
His hard heart melted. The ugly lines went out of his face and it grew
boyish once more, but sadder than ever.

His was not a nature to rest inactive. He poured out a hundred questions
to Jack who could not answer half a dozen of them. "Who is she? Where
does she live? Do you know her? Is she a good scholar? Does she go to
church? I hope she don't talk religion. Does she go to parties? Does she
dance?"

Jack replied as well as he was able. "She's a queer kind of a girl. She
don't dance or go to parties at all. She's an awful fine scholar. She