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 CHAPTER XXVIII

LOVE IN IRONS

VERYWHERE that men and women meet, be it in great and throbbing cities, on the solitary islands of a distant sea or even in those prison wards where night and day the clang of chains is heard—everywhere the little god with bow and quiver silently and persistently stalks his human quarry. He looses his shafts, regardless of whether they are to be messengers of happiness and joy or are to carry torture and pain.

As he courses the open stretches of the great wide world of humanity, so he fights his way through the jungle of the prison, the prison where men and women, penned apart by thick walls and iron bars, grope out a life full of despair and longing, never meeting face to face and only at rare intervals exchanging some distant words. But the prison possesses great inventive faculties and consequently always assists the little god of love to make his targets sure and clear.

The gay little sportsman is not difficult to please. He has an eye for hearts only, and it is nothing to him if the owners happen not to be very good looking. He looses his arrow at his victim with unhesitating keenness, even though she may have a face besmeared with smallpox scars or freckles or set with eyes that are aslant and with a mouth of bad design.

One evening, as I was writing in my cell, I suddenly 283