There was after all nothing extraordinary, unprecedented in the idea; it was one which had exercised over her in times past a curious fascination. She remembered well having read a graphic account of the last hours of a noted criminal, everything that he had said and done, the way in which he had met his fate, his last words ... it all came back to her with startling distinctness. She had tried at the time to put herself in his place, to think how she would have felt.... It was so futile, she had desisted from it at last with a smile at her own absurdity, the healthy instincts of her warm young life asserting themselves, as they generally did, against the occasional morbidness of her imagination. Now, looking back on it, the whole thing seemed one of those presentiments with which people doomed to misfortune are visited.
Yet the idea was absurd, even now. There was no danger, for she was innocent. That man was guilty—or so the papers said. She remembered that he had protested his innocence—to the end. And perhaps he had spoken the truth.
What did the papers say about her own case? The evidence against her was strong—she had always vaguely known that. But—what was it the man had said?—they'd never put a woman, guilty or innocent, in the electric chair. But what woman would accept her life on such terms as that? Elizabeth raised her head with that characteristic, proud little motion which not all the humiliations of prison life had availed to break her of entirely. "I would rather die," she said to herself, "I would rather die."
And then she remembered how she had shrunk from death—that morning months ago in the park. She felt again the intense physical repulsion, the instinctive clinging to life, the dread of the unknown....
That evening when the younger matron—the one she liked the best—came with her dinner, she put her through a series of questions, which embarrassed the kind woman not a little. Had she ever, Elizabeth demanded, seen people who were condemned to death and how had they behaved? Did they seem frightened, or were they calm and brave? Were they—did the matron really believe that they were guilty, beyond possibility of doubt?
"Are innocent people ever condemned," asked the girl, sitting huddled together on her bed and staring at the matron with haggard eyes. "Surely there couldn't be—you don't suppose there could be—such a terrible mistake?"
"I"—The matron's voice suddenly failed her, her eyes filled with tears. "Heaven knows I hope not, Miss," she said and went out hastily.
Elizabeth sat still, staring before her. "She believes me innocent—but she is afraid I will be found guilty." A little shudder passed through her, in spite of the intense heat. And then again the dull cloud of weary indifference descended upon her, and she said to herself that she did not care.
But as time went on, she knew that this was false.
A few days later Mrs. Bobby came back, after spending a week in the country much against her will. It seemed to her that Elizabeth looked much worse than when she saw her last. She sighed as she realized, more emphatically than ever, how much of the girl's beauty had left her with that wealth of color and outline which had been its most striking characteristic. Certainly any one who judged of her by the famous picture, taken in her first bloom, would be wofully disappointed now. There was only the soft sweep of the hair, and the strange shadow in the eyes—of which the first premonition as it were had somehow crept into the picture—but for these points of resemblance one would hardly know her for the same woman.