"And this woman," he groaned in agony of soul, "this woman, all in all to me, is—is his daughter!"
Flinging himself upon his hard and narrow bunk, he buried his head in his powerful arms, and tried to blot out thought from his fevered brain; but still the current ran on and on and on, endlessly, maddeningly. And to the problem, no answer seemed to come.
"She must know who I am," he pondered. "Even if her father has not told her, the papers have. True, she doesn't believe the infamous charge against me; but what then? Can she, on the other hand, believe the truth, that her father has conspired with Slade and those Cosmos thugs, and with the press and courts and the whole damnable prostituted system, to suppress and kill me?
"Can she believe her father guilty of all that? And of all the horrors of this capitalist Hell, that I have told her about? No! Human nature is incapable of such vast turnings from all the habits and environments of a lifetime. In her veins flows the blood of that arch-criminal, Flint. Her thoughts must be, to some extent, his thoughts. She must share his viewpoint, and be loyal to him. After this first flush of reaction against her father, she will go back to him. It is inevitable. Betwixt her and me is fixed a boundless space, wider than Heaven and earth. She is one pole, and I the other. If I have any strength or resolution or philosophy, now is the hour for its trial.
"This woman must be, shall be put away from every thought and wish and hope. And the word FINIS must be written at the end of the one brief chapter where our life-stories seem to have run along together in a false harmony and a fictitious peace!"
Thus pondered Gabriel, in the gloom of his harsh cell, branded with crime and writhing in the agony of soul that only those who love hopelessly can ever know.
And Catherine, what of her? What were her thoughts, emotions, inspirations as—seeming to live in a dream, with Gabriel's eloquence and the new vision of a better, saner, kindlier world shining through her soul—she made her way back to the dingy hotel where now, shabby as it was, she felt she had no right to stay, while others, homeless, walked the brutal streets?
Who shall know them? Who shall tell? A blind man, suddenly made to see, can find no words to express the wonder and bright glory of that sudden sight. A deaf man, regaining his lost sense, cannot describe the sudden burst of sound that fills the new, strange world wherein he finds himself. So, now, this cultured, gently bred woman, for the first time in her life understanding the facts, glimpsing the tragedy and grasping the answer to it all, felt that no words could compass her strange exultation and enlargement.
"It—it's like a chrysalis emerging into the form of a light, swift butterfly!" she pondered, as, back in her room once more, she prepared to write two letters. "Just for the present, I can't understand it all. I don't know, yet, whether I'm worthy to be a Socialist, to be one of that company of earnest, noble men and women striving for life and liberty and joy for all the world. But with the help of the man I trust and honor and believe in, and—and love—perhaps I may yet be. God grant it may be so!"
She thought, a few minutes more, her face lighted by an inner radiance that made its beauty spiritual and pure and calm. Then, having somewhat composed her thoughts, she wrote this letter to Maxim Waldron: