A long corridor with a high window at either end; on one side a row of cells separated from the main corridor by an iron fence sufficiently removed from the cells to make space for a narrow promenade. Where the middle cell should have been was a dark arched stone passage terminated by a stout oaken door. Patience knew that it led to the execution room. Two guards walked up and down the corridor. At the end, a sullen-looking woman stood over a stove, making tea. “You’ve got the house all to yourself,” said the keeper, with an attempt at jocularity. “If there’d been any men here I guess you’d have been sent to Dannemora, but it’s always Sing Sing for the swells, when it’s possible, you know.” He opened the gate of the iron fence and led her down to the cell at the extreme end. It was large and well lighted, but very different from the cell at White Plains. “Are you going to lock me in?” she asked. “Yes, ma’am, I must. If everything ain’t comfortable, just let me know.” The key grated in the lock. The head-keeper with an encouraging smile walked away. Patience crouched in a corner, for the first time fully realising the awfulness of her position, her imagination leaping to the room beyond the passage. What did it look like, that horrible chair? How long—how long—the hideously practical details of electric execution—the awful mystery of it—the new death to which imagination had not yet become accustomed— There was no sound but the monotonous pacing of the death watch. The world beyond those stone walls might have sprung away into space, leaving the great beautiful prison alone on a whirling fragment. She sprang to her feet and clenched her hands. “I’ll not go mad and make an everlasting fool of myself,” she thought. “If I have to die, I’ll die with my head up and my eyes dry. If I have the blood of the aristocrat in me I’ll prove it then, not die like a flabby woman of the people. The people! O God, how I hate the people!” XX A great petition was sent to the governor. It was signed uniformly by men and women of the upper class. It is not the aristocrats that do the electing in the United States. The lower classes were against her to a man. Her personality enraged them; her unreligion, her disdainful bearing, her intellect, her position, antagonised the superstitious and ambitious masses more than her crime. Inevitable result: the governor refused to pardon. Honora returned to Peele Manor from town in April. Bourke’s attempts to see her were frustrated by a bodyguard of servants. He took up his residence in the little village adjoining the grounds. He hardly knew what he hoped. But Honora Mairs was the last and only resource, and he could not keep away from her vicinity. He did not go to Sing Sing. It had been agreed between himself and Patience that he should stay away: they had no desire to communicate through iron bars.