Nona was to be allowed to visit the prison near the Troitska bridge on the following day and to spend ten minutes with her friend. She must understand that a guard would listen to whatever conversation was held. Also she must take with her nothing of any kind to present to Sonya Valesky. Their interview would be closely watched.
Naturally Barbara Meade insisted upon accompanying Nona. She knew, of course, that she would not be allowed to see the prisoner, nor had she the least wish to see her. But she could wait in some antechamber until the ten minutes passed and then bring Nona safely back to their lodging place. For certainly the experience ahead of her friend would be a painful one, and although Nona did her best to conceal her nervousness from the younger girl, Barbara again was not deluded.
When the two girls set out for the prison the next afternoon it would have been difficult to decide which one most dreaded the ordeal. But in truth the ordeal was in a way a mutual one. While she waited, doubtless Barbara’s imagination would paint as tragic a scene as Nona might be obliged to go through with.
It seemed to Nona Davis, after leaving Barbara, that she walked down a mile or more of corridor. The corridor might have been an underground sewer, so dark and unwholesome were its sights and smells. It led past dozens of small iron doors with locks and chains fastened on the outside.
Finally Nona’s guard paused before one of these doors and then opened it. Inside was an iron grating with bars placed at intervals of about six inches apart. The room it barricaded was six feet square and contained a bed and stool. There was one small window overhead, not much larger than a single pane of glass in an average old-fashioned window.
But the light from the window fell directly upon the head of the woman who was seated beneath it.
Sonya Valesky had not been told that she was to receive a visitor. So perhaps Nona did appear like a sudden vision of a Fra Angelico angel, standing unexpectedly in the dark corridor with her hair as golden as a shaft of sunlight.
Sonya only stared at the girl without speaking. But Nona saw that her friend’s dark hair, which had been a little streaked with gray at their first meeting more than two years before, was now almost pure white. However, Sonya did not look particularly ill or unhappy; her blue eyes were still serene. Whatever faith in life she may have lost, she had not lost faith in the cause for which she must suffer.
“Don’t you know me, Sonya?” Nona asked almost timidly, as if she were talking to a stranger.
Then the Russian woman came forward with all her former dignity and grace. She was wearing a black dress of some rough material, but it seemed to Nona Davis that she had never seen a more beautiful woman. Sonya was like a white lily found growing in some underground dungeon.