Two weeks Harry had been in the hospital ward, for after those months of confinement the depleted blood had made recuperation slow; but he had steadily mended, and now, though still at times his healing shoulder pained him somewhat, he was practically as strong as before. He had been acutely grateful for the change to the pleasant Record-Room, with its broad window to the sunshine and the drier upper air, for the fact that he no longer tramped in the lock-step or took his meals in the common mess-room—most of all for release from his unsavoury cell-mate. For since the affair in the shop, he had been given a cell to himself.
His momentary glimpse on that day of Echo had stung his every sense to quivering protest. It had pierced, as with a fiery sword, the torpor which had unwrapped his love with its protecting armour and that love had awaked to agonised consciousness, vivified and intensified. Then, in his loneliness, the knowledge that the woman he would have died for had left him to drag out his penalty, would sweep over him till a fierce hatred of her would rise up in him—to be swept away as swiftly by something sweeter and stronger that would not be denied. So, in the end, mingled with this confusion of feeling, there came to him the knowledge that the bitter conviction that she could never again be anything to him, with the contempt for life which had grown from it, had been nevertheless inexpressibly softened by the living warmth of her presence, sad and fleeting as that had been.
Presently Harry turned back to the desk, and picked up the annotated card, a portion of whose record he had been about to transcribe in permanent form in a leathern tome that lay there. It was the filing-card on whose reverse side was pasted his own photograph, full-face and profile, and containing his physical measurements—taken upon the precise and delicate instruments that lined the room—which had been filled out on the day of his arrival. It was the sight of this, with the bitter memories it evoked, which had given him pause. There it was, an enduring monument, stamping forever the man to whom it corresponded, a convict, thrust, so long as he should live, from the society of clean and upright men and women, debarred even from the exercise of the functions of citizenship!
As he dipped his pen in the ink, a quick step sounded on the stairway, and the door opened to admit a man wearing a frogged overcoat with huge fur collar and lapels, and a fur cap whose flaps were turned down over his ears. He was about Harry's age though of slightly heavier build, with somewhat similar firm chin and grey eyes, but with cheeks in which the blood darkled redly, and across one was a slanting scar, slight but sufficiently perceptible. He carried a small valise which he set down, blowing on his nattily-gloved fingers.
"Oh! I beg pardon," he said. "The Warden told me I might change my togs up here. I didn't know the room was occupied."
"You'll not disturb me," answered Harry. "As it happens, I am occupied too."
The stranger laughed—a rather eager, boyish laugh which caught Harry with a subtle tang of old acquaintance. With the pen in his hand, he was staring curiously at that ruddy cheek and its slanting scar, his mind following something elusive and far away. He was feeling the edge of a half-recollection, vague and shadowy and dream-like, of a saw-dust bar-room floor lighted with flaring lamps, of ribald conversation, of a deal table across which a face like that had looked at him. But the memory at which he grasped had belonged to that phase of intoxication in which sense-impression had left no enduring record, and he could not capture it.
John Stark was unconscious of the fixed gaze. He had opened the valise upon a chair and now was laying its contents upon another. Harry saw with surprise that these included a striped jacket and trousers, flat peaked cap and heavy hob-nailed shoes such as each inmate of the prison wore. Last he took out a flat tin box which opened out in two sections, and set it on the end of the desk. It was a "make-up" box of the stage dressing-room, and the sight of its tiny compartments, holding rouge, lamp-black, powder and grease-paint, the pencils and hare's foot, brought back to Harry with a rush old days of amateur theatricals and society stagery. These articles laid out, the other began rapidly to undress. He chuckled as, turning, he caught the look of puzzle on Harry's face.
"I'm not really crazy," he said laughingly. "The fact is, I'm trying an experiment—with the Warden's permission. For half an hour I'm going to take my place with those fellows down there;"—he nodded towards the window—"going in to supper with them. I have a bet on with the Deputy Warden that I can do it so that none of the Superintendents will spot me!"
He had discarded shirt, collar and shoes, and was now arraying himself in the coarse striped garments and clumsy foot-wear. He looked himself over half-humorously. "Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I swear, it gives me the creeps. This is the real stuff, you see! I don't get the true spirit of the thing when I play it."