Poor child! Poor child! So young, so beautiful, and so wicked! So dreadfully, horribly wicked!
To say that she thought would be to convey a wrong impression of her state. Thought, like her eyes, was wide open, but it did not think—any more than her eyes saw. It stared—stared fixedly, without blinking, at the consciousness of her great wickedness.
Dreadful images passed over the darkened curtain of life, like the pictures of a magic-lantern.
In Sproutgreen a poor girl had taken some clothes that did not belong to her. Only a bodice (very much worn), an old skirt, a vest or two (she was badly off for vests), and some stockings. She had not meant to take them, she said ... but all the same she had taken them, and they had sent her to prison.
That picture showed on Pam's screen too.
She had not meant to take it. No, no; but she had taken it. Why should n't she be sent to prison? Why should the one poor girl be made to suffer and she go free?
A man in Hunmouth had stolen a leg of mutton from a butcher's shop when the butcher's back was all but turned. If he 'd only waited a moment longer or set off a moment sooner all would have been well. But his wife was starving and he was in a hurry. He wanted the mutton ... it was noble of him to risk himself for a dying wife. But the law recognises no nobility in theft, and sent him to prison.
That picture showed on Pam's mind too.
She was n't starving; there was no excuse for her, even of pity. She had stolen something she did n't want. She was a thief, unworthy to receive the weight of honest people's eyes. Looks now, the lightest of them, smiles and glances, were all insufferable burdens deposited upon the bowed shoulders of her shame.
Poor girl! poor, unhappy girl! Wrong from first to last. Seeing the world upside down. Cast forth from the cool leafy oasis of hope into the burning desert of despair. If she could have taken but one peep into the man's heart the rain of blessed relief would have fallen in abundance; she would have kissed that dread letter for token of her forgiveness; would have risen, smiling in glory, like the sun through April clouds.