Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/302

290 mingled with her words. "Your heart is good; it is white. &hellip; I shall give my life for you. &hellip; I thought that I was to perish here; then you came and gave me your hand to help me back to hope, Paul. &hellip;"

Someone shouted loudly:

"The water is ready for making tea. Go to the kitchen!"

Their conversation was interrupted, but two months later a ceremony took place in the prison chapel, when Paul Rozanoff, having finished his term, was married to Katerina Gulaieff. There was no wedding breakfast, and after the ceremony the husband went away, and the iron doors slammed behind him, while the wife returned to her prison cell, where she remained, however, quiet, thoughtful and happy. Every Sunday, Paul came to visit her, bringing food and gifts and, with a happy light in his eyes, showing her his hard, calloused hands.

"These two people will not perish," I thought with joy and satisfaction. "The prison will not destroy them but will remain in their lives only as a nightmare of the long ago."

Perhaps this pair, so curiously met and drawn together by suffering, were afterwards very happy and freed by their trials from the lesser difficulties of life. I want to believe that it was so.

When the prisoners had become well acquainted through the medium of the telegraph and "the telephone," the second stage of the prison love-stories was ushered in—they wanted to see one another face to face. In this crisis the inventive faculties of the old prisoners came to their aid. I soon discovered that they had all secured from somewhere looking-glasses. The men above focused broken bits of this wonder glass upon the mirrors which the women held in their hands stretched