Soon afterwards Harroway departed, and the day wore on. The next passed and the next, and other days followed in dreary succession. They added ten years to his life. In spite of defiant resolve to consider no phase of the prison discipline and degradation, the taint of the cell ate into his flesh and weakened his soul with strange cowardices. Sometimes the weight of evidence crushed him overwhelmingly and he shook in an agony of terror at the consequences. The strain of silence and secrecy suffocated him. Like a diver who has just exceeded his habitual period of immersion, he felt that in another moment his temples would burst and his heart fail. Then he would ask himself passionately the reason of his silence, rebel against the self-imposed imprisonment of speech. Was she worth the folly of this sacrifice--she whose inconceivable avarice seemed to have annihilated elementary human emotion? If the loss of her money should kill her--were it not better that she should die? To brave the trial, secure acquittal, live through the eternal after-stain of suspicion--for that he was prepared. But to face the gallows--accept her gift of the halter--his courage failed him. The cold sweat of the nightmare broke out from head to foot. He clung desperately to life. Once a shaft of sunlight streamed into his cell and abutted on the opposite whitewashed wall. He sat on his wooden chair and leaned against the bed and watched the dust dancing in the gold. Touching some hidden chord of forgotten association--a child’s poetic fancy long ago, perhaps, translating the glory of glistening motes in the quivering mystery of the beam--it awakened an unutterable torture of yearning for the free air of the world. He threw himself on the bed and buried his face in the pillow to prevent a cry from passing his lips. But such crises of weakness were rare, and they were always followed by long intervals of dogged and half-cynical calm. He had sunk far beneath his ideals of honour in his marriage with Minna Hart. Her taunts had been just. He, Hugh Colman, who had ever before sinned _en prince_, and had never shrunk from the eyes of man or woman, had played the part of a skulking villain. He had married her for her flesh, for her money, thereby wronging her. He had made her the toy of a week’s passion, and then neglected and wounded her. Now was the hour, if any there could be in the world, when he might make expiation both to her and to himself. He would take his chance, meet his destiny, this time at any rate, like a man. He would not redeem twenty lives at the price of her money. In his contradictory way the man was as proud as Lucifer.