Gradually the moans died away. The convulsive heaving of her breast subsided. A little later, when her sister Monica came in search of her, she found Angela in a dead faint.
By night she was in a fever.
CHAPTER IX
TWO LETTERS
Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 16th, 18—
Dear Lady of Mercy:
I have served my sentence. I am free. At first the horrible humiliation of my treatment, of my surroundings, of the depths I had to sink to, burned into me. Then the thought of you sustained me. Your gentle voice: your beauty: your pity: your unbounded faith in me strengthened my soul. All the degradation fell from me. They were but ignoble means to a noble end. I was tortured that others might never know sorrow. I was imprisoned that my countrymen might know liberty. And so the load was lighter.
The memory of those three WONDERFUL days was so marvellous, so vivid, that it shone like a star through the blackness of those TERRIBLE days.
You seem to have taken hold of my heart and my soul and my life.