The tears dried suddenly in Gusta's blue eyes. She spoke fiercely.
"You don't mean it! No, you don't mean it! I see you don't--you needn't say you do! Oh, you needn't say you do!"
She squeezed Elizabeth's hand almost maliciously and Elizabeth winced with pain.
"You--you don't know!" Gusta went on. And then she hesitated, seemed to deliberate on the verge of a certain desperation, to pause for an instant before a temptation to which she longed to yield.
"I could tell you something," she said significantly.
A wonder gathered in Elizabeth's eyes. Her heart was beating rapidly, she could feel it throbbing.
"Do you know why I sent for you--what I had to tell you?"
She was looking directly in Elizabeth's eyes; the faces of both girls became pale. And Elizabeth groped in her startled mind for some clear recognition, some postulation of a fact, a horrible, blasting certitude that was beginning to formulate itself, a certitude that would have swept away in an instant all those formal barriers that had stood in the way of her coming to this haggard prison. She shuddered, and closed her mind, as she closed her eyes just then, to shut out the look in the eyes of this imprisoned girl.
But the moment was too tense to last. Some mercy was in the breast of the girl to whom life had shown so little mercy. Voluntarily, she released Elizabeth, and put up her hands to her face, and shook with sobs.
"Don't, don't, Gusta," Elizabeth pleaded, "don't cry, dear."