They watched Marjorie out of sight. Ringing the bell outside the great gates, a porter appeared from his lodge, examined the order, and admitted them. They were kept waiting a little while in the porter’s lodge. Eventually a warder appeared and asked them to sign their names in a large book which was kept there for the purpose. They had to fill in their places of residence, their professions, and various other details. "I almost feel as if I were signing my own warrant," Despard chuckled. He looked at the warder. "I suppose we shall be let out again?" "We shall be only too happy to let you go, sir," the man replied without moving a muscle of his clean-shaven, emotionless face. Despard linked his arm through Rupert’s as the chief warder led them across the great stone square and put them in charge of a subordinate. "For heaven’s sake smile, man, or they’ll really think you’ve done time here. That’s exactly what you look like." "I can’t see that there’s anything to smile at. Other people’s misfortunes never amuse me." "Think of your own, then," Despard replied, "that will cheer you up. By the way, have you heard from Ruby since you left town?" Rupert’s cheeks flushed. He was saved the necessity of replying, by the warder halting them outside another gate. It was opened with much jangling of keys. Though the sun was shining outside it could not penetrate here. The building was almost entirely of granite, cold and grey. There was no relief for the eye anywhere; just harsh granite underfoot, overhead, and on all sides. Rupert, free man though he was, felt a strange sense of repulsion, a childish desire to beat against those granite walls, to try and break them down, to escape. The whole time he was in the building, anywhere within the surrounding walls of the prison, he felt as if he were a prisoner. Now and then he heard the warder explaining. He found it difficult to pay any attention to him. Despard, on the other hand, was interested in everything, asking innumerable questions, watching convicts at work and inspecting their work. Almost every kind of trade seemed to be carried on within the prison walls. Tailors, saddlers, shoemakers, basket-makers. The men sat or stood in rows, each one a certain distance apart from his fellows; and in the middle and at the end of each row was a warder. Absolute silence reigned, a silence that to an imaginative person like Rupert could be felt, almost seen. It seemed to be part of the stone corridors, the granite walls. And granite appeared to be beaten into the convicts’ souls until the expression of it was graven on their faces. Like their walls they were cold, grey, silent. Here and there a few retained traces of humanity; others suggested primeval men of the stone age, though they wore no hair on their faces and their heads had been shaven until nothing but innumerable spikes stood erect from the scalp.