Wilkes plumbed emotional deeps in the womanhood she would have forsworn, and she flung herself, sobbing, upon her bed.

II

So the little secretary found her. Miss Archer was born under a more benignant star than her superior, and habitually tried in such quiet ways as a wise grand vizier may to leaven the ruling autocracy with kindness. She told Jean that she had come to transfer her to the regular routine, bade her bathe her eyes, and made cheerful talk while she collected her few possessions. They crossed the quadrangle in the wintry dusk, turning in at a cottage near the prison just as Jean was gripped by the fear that the monster itself would engulf her.

At the door-sill she felt a hand slip into hers.

"Be willing, dearie, and seem as cheerful as you can," counseled her guide. "I'm anxious to have you make a good first impression here in Cottage No. 6. It's immensely important that you stand well with your matron. Everything depends upon it."

Jean melted before her friendliness.

"I wish I could be under you," she said impulsively. "This place wouldn't seem—what it is."

She framed this wish anew when she faced the matron herself in the bleak cleanliness of the hall. This person was a variant of the superintendent's impersonal type and a slavish plagiarist of her mannerisms. A bundle of prejudices, she believed herself dowered with superhuman impartiality; and now, in muddle-headed pursuit of this notion, she promptly decided that an offender so plainly superior to the average ought in the fitness of things to receive less consideration than the average. Jean accordingly went smarting to her room.

Happily she was given little time to think about it. The incessant round which, day in and day out, was to fill her waking hours, caught her into its mechanism. A querulous bell tapped somewhere, her door, in common with every one in the corridor, was unlocked, and she merged with a uniformed file which, without words, shuffled down two flights of stairs and ranged itself about the tables of a desolate dining-hall. Whereupon the matron, who had taken her station at a small table laid for herself and another black-garbed official, raised her thin voice and repeated,

"The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord!"

An unintelligible mumbling followed, which by dint of strained listening at many ensuing meals Jean 

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