She was conscious of long, ill-smelling, concrete-floored corridors, with little steel cages at either side--cages where hopeless, sodden wrecks of men were standing, or sitting in attitudes of brutal despair, or lying on foul bunks, motionless and inert as logs.
For a moment her heart failed her.
"Good Lord! Can such things be ?" she whispered to herself.

"So this--this is a police station?
And real jails and penitentiaries are worse?
Oh, horrible! I never dreamed of anything like this, or any men like these!" The officer, stopping at a cell-door and banging thereon with some keys, startled her.
"Here, youse," he addressed the man within, "lady to see youse!" Catherine was conscious that her heart was pounding hard and her breath coming fast, as she peered in through those cold, harsh metal bars.

For a minute she could find no thought, no word.

Within, her eyes--still unaccustomed to the gloom--vaguely perceived a man's figure, big and powerful, and different in its bearing from those other cringing wretches she had glimpsed.
Then the man came toward her, stopped, peered and for a second drew back.

And then--then she heard his voice, in a kind of startled joy: "Oh--is it--is it _you_ ?" "Yes," she answered.