“This is my deliverer,” he heard her breathe.
“How have you come to know it?” The advocate was devoured by an intolerable curiosity.
“Your hands—your hands, they are so powerful; are you not so strong?”
There was nothing in these words that the advocate had expected; the voice, the manner of their utterance, their apparent irrelevance, made a strange effect in his ears.
“They will not do me to death,” she said, in a tone he could hardly hear. “I never tasted life until I was brought into prison. And you cannot think how sweet it is to me. Everything has become so beautiful: the birds, the trees, and the sky, and the crowds of people and the mud of the great city.”
She clutched the hand of the young advocate with a convulsive shudder.
“Your quietness tells me that you understand.” Her voice was touched with ecstasy. “You do not answer or seek to console me. You are the one I have dreamed of in prison. Where is your hand?”
Again Northcote yielded to her entreaty, this time without a sense of repulsion.
“Yes, this is the hand that has been around me in the darkness, when I have shuddered in my dreams.”
“It is wonderful,” said Northcote, “that you should know that you will be able to lean upon me.”