Gray age had drunk her life and had given her nothing in return--neither companionship nor sympathy nor understanding; only the hunger of a coarse manhood.

Her obedience to the supreme will of her jealous jailer gave no ground for scolding or reproach, and that saved her much.

She was even quietly cheerful, but it was only the pale reflection of a lost youth which would have been buoyant and gallant, gay and glad, had it been given the natural thing in the natural world.
There came a day, however, when the long, unchanging routine, gray with prison grayness, was broken; when the round of household duties and the prison discipline were interrupted.

It was as sudden as a storm in the tropics, as final and as fateful as birth or death.

That day she was taken suddenly and acutely ill.