How another man might have felt, in my place, I cannot, of course, say. To my mind, such a question—on her lips—was too shocking to be answered in words. I bowed.
“And the body is buried,” she went on, “in the prison?”
I could remain silent no longer. “Is there no human feeling left in you?” I burst out. “What do these horrid questions mean?”
“Don’t be angry with me, sir; you shall hear directly. I want to know first if I am to be buried in the prison?”
I replied as before, by a bow.
“Now,” she said, “I may tell you what I mean. In the autumn of last year I was taken to see some waxworks. Portraits of criminals were among them. There was one portrait—” She hesitated; her infernal self-possession failed her at last. The color left her face; she was no longer able to look at me firmly. “There was one portrait,” she resumed, “that had been taken after the execution. The face was so hideous; it was swollen to such a size in its frightful deformity—oh, sir, don’t let me be seen in that state, even by the strangers who bury me! Use your influence—forbid them to take the cap off my face when I am dead—order them to bury me in it, and I swear to you I’ll meet death tomorrow as coolly as the boldest man that ever mounted the scaffold!” Before I could stop her, she seized me by the hand, and wrung it with a furious power that left the mark of her grasp on me, in a bruise, for days afterward. “Will you do it?” she cried. “You’re an honorable man; you will keep your word. Give me your promise!”
I gave her my promise.
The relief to her tortured spirit expressed itself horribly in a burst of frantic laughter. “I can’t help it,” she gasped; “I’m so happy.”
My enemies said of me, when I got my appointment, that I was too excitable a man to be governor of a prison. Perhaps they were not altogether wrong. Anyhow, the quick-witted Doctor saw some change in me, which I was not aware of myself. He took my arm and led me out of the cell. “Leave her to me,” he whispered. “The fine edge of my nerves was worn off long ago in the hospital.”
When we met again, I asked what had passed between the Prisoner and himself.