“Thank you.”
From the telegraph office at Albany over the wires to Sing Sing’s house of death flew the message:
“Sentence stayed for three months while the Governor considers your pardon. Faith and hope eternal. RUTH.”
The next express carried her to him with the copy of the Governor’s order in her bosom.
The warden smiled and congratulated her. She had long before won his heart, and there was no favour within the limits of law that he had not granted to the man she loved.
Ruth looked at Gordon tenderly through the barred opening of his cell.
Her heart ached as she saw the ashen pallor of his face and the skin beginning to draw tight and slick across the protruding cheek-bones of his once magnificent face. Three years of prison had bent his shoulders and reduced his giant frame to a mere shadow of his former self. Only the eyes had grown larger and softer, and their gaze now seemed turned within. They burned with a feverish mystic beauty.
Ruth fixed on him a look of melting tenderness and asked:
“Do you not long for the open fields, the sky and sea, my dear?”
He gazed at her hungrily.