"I—I did think—I was afraid—that people might see a resemblance—"
Edith made an inarticulate sound intended for derision.
"As a matter of fact, Hubert said it was probably a good thing for him to be obliged to paint some one else than Jennie. He'd been painting her so much that he was in danger of painting her into everything, like Andrea del Sarto with his wife."
"Then you—you don't think that he's painted her in here?"
Edith looked again.
"Well, if you put it that way—and you were crazy to find a likeness—perhaps about the brows—and down here at the curve of the cheek and neck—but no! Not really! This is a carnal woman, and Jennie's a thing of the spirit." She dismissed the subject as of no further importance. "Do tell me. Is there anyone in New York who reglazes these English chintzes?"
So Junia made new plans, waiting for Bob to come home to dinner in order to meet him on the threshold, throw her arms about his neck, and give him the glad facts.
But Bob sent a telephone message that he would not be home to dinner, that he would not be home that night. No one was to worry, and he would turn up at breakfast in the morning.
It was all the information he gave because, by special permission from the warden, and under a solemn promise not to convey anything to the prisoner that would enable him to cheat the law, he was spending the night at Bitterwell.
He was spending it in a low one-storied building some sixty feet long and not more than twenty in width. Its arrangements were simple. On entering, you came into a corridor some six feet wide, running the length of seven little rooms. The seven little rooms were each furnished with a cot, a fixed wash-basin, a table, and a chair. Each had, however, this peculiarity—that the end toward the corridor had no wall. Instead of a wall it had long, strong perpendicular white bars, some two or three inches apart, and running from ceiling to floor. The inmate was thus visible at all times, like an animal in a cage. In the corridor were half a dozen chairs of the kitchen variety, and at the end a little yellow door.