“O God, canst Thou do everything but speak!” And again: “That hour—the memory of that hour, in exchange for my ruined life!”
One day the gaoler came to him and said: “Monsieur Turgeon, you are free. The Governor has cut off five years from your sentence.”
Then he was told that people were waiting without—Medallion, the Little Chemist and his wife, and others more important. But he would not go to meet them, and he stepped into the open world alone at dawn the next morning, and looked out upon a still sleeping village. Suddenly there stood before him a woman, who had watched by the prison gates all night; and she put out her hand in entreaty, and said with a breaking voice: “You are free at last!”
He remembered her—the woman who had looked at him so anxiously and sorrowfully in the court-room. “Why did you come to meet me?” he asked.
“I was sorry for you.”
“But that is no reason.”
“I once committed a crime,” she whispered, with shrinking bitterness.
“That’s bad,” he said. “Were you punished?” He looked at her keenly, almost fiercely, for a curious suspicion shot into his mind.
She shook her head and answered no.
“That’s worse!”