Her father and Otto rushed forward as soon as she entered the doors. She broke down again. "Take me home! Take me home!" she sobbed. "I've not done anything." The men forgot that they had promised each the other to be calm, and cursed and cried alternately. The matron came, spoke to her gently.
"You'll have to go now, child," she said.
Hilda kissed her father, then she and Otto clasped each the other closely. "It'll turn out all right, dear," he said. "We're having a streak of bad luck. But our good luck'll be all the better when it comes."
Strength and hope seemed to pass from him into her. She walked away firmly and the last glimpse they had of her sad sweet young face was a glimpse of a brave little smile trying to break through its gray gloom. But alone in her cell, seated upon the board that was her bed, her disgrace and loneliness and danger took possession of her. She was a child of the people, brought up to courage and self-reliance. She could be brave and calm before false accusers, before staring crowds. But here, with a dim gas-jet revealing the horror of grated bars and iron ceiling, walls and floor—
She sat there, hour after hour, sleepless, tearless, her brain burning, the cries of drunken prisoners in adjoining cells sounding in her ears like the shrieks of the damned. Seconds seemed moments, moments hours. "I'm dreaming," she said aloud at last. She started up and hurled herself against the bars, beating them with her hands. "I must wake or I'll die. Oh, the disgrace! Oh! the shame!"
And she flung herself into a corner of the bench, to dread the time when the darkness and the loneliness would cease to hide her.
XII
EXIT MR. FEUERSTEIN
The matron brought her up into the front room of the station house at eight in the morning. Casey looked at her haggard face with an expression of satisfaction. "Her nerve's going," he said to the sergeant. "I guess she'll break down and confess to-day."