Miss Cigale sank back into her chair again, in the dark corner. The man was speaking to her, but she did not hear him.
“What has he done?” she thought. “A detective! If I can only make them think it was me. But, oh! How can I bear this?”
Because, for all her failures, Miss Cigale had never before encountered disgrace. She had suffered the crudest disappointments, she had been hungry, cold, shabby, sleepless with anxiety, and all this she had endured gallantly. But to be arrested by a detective in a pawnshop!
Her idea of what was going to be done to her might have been laughable if there could be found on earth any one able to laugh at the stricken, heartsick creature. She thought that she would presently be taken before a judge, and that, if she kept silent, as she intended to do, she would be put into prison for whatever unimaginable offense the real owner of the ticket had committed.
“I can’t be brave about it!” she said to herself. “I can’t; I’m—I’m frightened.”
Why must she sit here so long? Why didn’t they take her away? It would be almost better to be in prison than here, where the door opened and closed, and people came in and out, and every one had a glance, casual or curious, at her corner. The detective was writing in a notebook. What was he waiting for?
“Handcuffs!” thought Miss Cigale. “Or—or a—warrant.” Imagination carried her[Pg 437] very far; she would not have been surprised by the entrance of a file of soldiers, or white-coated doctors with a strait-jacket. The most astounding images of things read or heard of filled her mind; she lost track of time and space; what she suffered was a timeless, universal thing, such as had been suffered these thousands of years by how many dazed and trembling victims. The law—The Law!
“Here she is!” said the detective to some one who had just entered. “Claims it’s her own ticket.”
“Oh—good—Lord!” cried a voice which reached Miss Cigale from very far away.
“Well, come along!” said the detective. “Come over to the station an’ you can make your charge.”