Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/304

292 wrapt in thought and smiling sadly at what was evidently passing time and again through her mind. The prisoners began to question her and tried to make her acquaintance, but she gazed with terror upon the barred windows and the caged beings behind them and never spoke.

"A proud woman," the prisoners decided and paid her no more attention.

One day, as she was taking her walk as usual, the Commandant of the Prison approached and talked with her for a long time. The woman, after having been so long without an opportunity to speak with people of her kind, was evidently pleased and began talking vivaciously, once even laughing sincerely and loudly. This was the undoing of her. The prisoners looked out through the bars with flashing eyes upon the apparently lighthearted pair and, when the Commandant took his leave of her, they loosed a storm of curses and awful oaths at the woman. Thoroughly frightened, she left the pen and ran to her cell.

The next day during the exercise hour, when the men were walking in their enclosure, the unknown woman came out into the cage for the women and, approaching the fence on the side toward them, proudly drew herself up and asked of the prisoners in a sad but musical voice:

"Why did you wrong me so yesterday? Why, pray?"

At first the embarrassed prisoners remained silent, but suddenly one of the Georgians, Mikeladze, ran over to the fence and upbraided the woman in anger:

"You are proud toward us, but toward this executioner, the Commandant, no!"

With these words he hurled a stone at her and struck her in the breast. The woman swayed and put her hand to her heart. The political prisoners ran to her aid,