Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/31

 sympathy of another human being affect me, after what I have suffered and endured?"

"You have never been a happy woman?"

The reporter looked thoughtfully at the rose she held in her hand as she spoke, and pulled off its petals, one by one.

"For five years I have been the most miserable woman on earth."

The expression of the prisoner's face had changed. The smile was gone; the brown eyes looked at the fallen petals in the other's lap, with the dreaminess of retrospection in their glance.

"Five years ago I married," she went on, almost to herself. "Since then I have known the depths of human misery and degradation. Within a week of my marriage I knew exactly what I had done,—I had tied myself for life to the most consummate scoundrel in existence. He spent his time devising ways of persecuting and humiliating me, and his efforts were eminently successful. He made me what I am."

"You should have separated from him."

"Yes, but that was impossible. My mother, who is dependent on me, and whom