ria. It drew up with a clatter,
and I saw through the barred door the single prisoner--a young girl of
perhaps eighteen--dressed in rusty black. She was resting her forehead
against a bar and looking out, her quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her
new surroundings with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her
pale, thin-upped, oval face quite expressionless. Behind those bars she
seemed to me for all the world like a little animal of the cat tribe
being brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but if she had I felt
she would not shrink--only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she
was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at
once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began
to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he
smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his horses,
and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars, just
staring out. Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be able to see
right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to know that
little creature through and through, as one knows anything that one
surprises off its guard, sunk in its most private moods. I seemed to see
her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral soul, so stripped of all
defence, as if she had taken it from her heart and handed it out to me.
I saw that she was one of those whose hands slip as indifferently into
others' pockets as into their own; incapable of fidelity, and incapable
of trusting; quick as cats, and as devoid of application; ready to
scratch, ready to purr, ready to scratch again; quick to change, and
secretly as unchangeable as a little pebble. And I thought: "Here we
are, taking her to the Zoo (by no means for the first time, if demeanour
be any guide), and we shall put her in a cage, and make her sew, and give
her good books which she will not read; and she will sew, and walk up and
down, until we let her out; then she will return to her old haunts, and
at once go prowling and do exactly the same again, what ever it was,
until we catch her and lock her up once more. And in this way we shall
go on purifying Society until she dies." And I thought: If indeed she had
been created cat in body as well as in soul, we should not have treated
her thus, but should have said: 'Go on, little cat, you scratch us
sometimes, you steal often, you are as sensual as the night. All this we
c