"But if I do this—if I promise silence—is there nothing I can do—nothing I can say?" she whispered brokenly.
"There is nothing you can do," I replied solemnly. "Think of this: that in the years that are coming it may happen, in God's own good time, that some child you love may stand in need of a friend who will strike as I struck—fight as I fought—for her honour. It may happen, long after I am dead, and forgotten by all but you, that some such an one may spring up, to do again more perfectly what I did—springing from the dead ashes of my past to work out the pitiful story I began. Remember that—and don't stop me in what I try to do."
I did not know then the full meaning of what I said; all that was to come upon me later. I did not then understand how strangely prophetic my words were, nor how strangely that prophecy was to be fulfilled. For the moment I had succeeded in my purpose; she promised me solemnly that she would keep silence.
Of our farewell I will not speak; she whispered to me words too sacred to be written here. Then, as it seemed, the prison wall went down, and she faded out into the world; the prison wall came up again, and shut me in. But it shut in a stronger and a better man.
I had no further vision of her; my prison had shut me in permanently, and I dreamed of her no more, save in my waking thoughts. I did not sleep that night; I remember that I lay there quietly, with my hands clasped under my head, looking up at the ceiling, and thinking about her; seeing her going on through the long years to come, living her quiet life, and carrying me always in her secret remembrance. That was good; that was very good. Many a man has died with a less blessed thought than that in his mind at the end.
But I was not to die in that sense, after all. Quite early in the morning—that morning on which I had set my mind steadily as the one that meant the end for me—the governor came to my cell, and announced to me that I was reprieved. I was totally unprepared for it; at first I could not understand what he meant. But he told me that on account of my youth the death sentence had been commuted to penal servitude for life.
On account of my youth! I laughed aloud when he said that, because the irony of the thing was so great and so bitter. I was to be shut away for the rest of my natural life—in a living death worse than any I had anticipated. I remember that I prayed him almost wildly to disregard the order—to set it aside—to declare that it had arrived too late; and I know that he seemed surprised that I, so young, should long so ardently for death.
So I passed out of the cell from which I had thought to pass only on one last journey, and went away to the place where I was to serve my sentence. And the only thing that troubled me—the only thing about which I thought at all in that new change of events—was what Barbara would think or do when she knew. For myself I did not care; I had died before, at that moment when the wall of the prison had seemed to go down, and Barbara had gone out of my life.