At last Elizabeth turned to her, and a faint smile hovered about her white lips.
"Do you know," she said, "did the warden show you? in that corner there they have—the old scaffold—what's left of it, at least. They keep it as an interesting relic. Oh, he wouldn't show it to me"—she smiled again painfully—" he's too considerate—I heard him telling one of the visitors. They don't have anything of the kind now, he said,—there is—Sing Sing and the electric chair. And that is—or so they say—more merciful. But is it—do you really think it can be?" She paused and stared up at Mrs. Bobby with eyes full of a dawning terror. "To have a hood put over one's face," she went on, her voice trembling, "that's how they do it, isn't it?—to wait—wait for the shock." ... She stopped, the look of terror in her eyes grew deeper. She lifted the roses from her lap and held them up before her face, as if to shut out, with their color and fragrance, some horrible vision. "Oh, I see it day and night," she said, "day and night! If I see it much longer, I shall go mad."
Mrs. Bobby's hand tightened convulsively upon hers.
"Elizabeth, my dear," she cried, "you mustn't think of such possibilities. It could never—come to that, they would never—carry their cruelty to that extent"—Her voice faltered.
Elizabeth put down her roses and looked up at her. Her face showed recovered self-control. "Why—because I'm a woman?" she asked, with a pale little smile. "That's what the warden said—that they wouldn't condemn a woman to death. But even if they—stopped short of that, would imprisonment—would this sort of thing, or worse"—she swept her hand with a comprehensive gesture round her—"wouldn't death, on the whole, be better?"
And Mrs. Bobby could not answer, for she thought in her heart it would be—infinitely better.
But in a moment she rallied her energies.
"Elizabeth," she said, "there's no necessity to consider—either alternative. I believe firmly that we shall get you off. But in order to do it you must help us—to defend you. You seem indifferent about it; Mr. Fenton complains that you keep things back. You can't afford to trifle—tell us everything. Isn't there"—she leaned forward eagerly and grasped Elizabeth's hand—"doesn't Julian Gerard know something that would help us?"
She felt Elizabeth start and shiver; then stiffen into sudden rigidity. The hand she held was withdrawn, and with the action the girl seemed to release herself, mentally and physically, from her grasp.
"I don't know," she said, and her voice was cold, almost as though she resented being questioned, "I don't know why you think that."