"No--no!" the girl protested. "Not that. You've hardly changed at all,
except--oh, I hardly know how to put it in words. It's your expression.
You look sad--tired of the things around you."
"I am tired of the things around me," Saidee said. "Often I've felt like
a dead body in a grave with no hope of even a resurrection. What were
those lines of Christina Rossetti's I used to say over to myself at
first, while it still seemed worth while to revolt? Some one was buried,
had been buried for years, yet could think and feel, and cry out against
the doom of lying 'under this marble stone, forgotten, alone.' Doesn't
it sound agonizing--desperate? It just suited me. But now--now----"
"Are things better? Are you happier?" Victoria clasped her sister
passionately.
"No. Only I'm past caring so much. If you've come here, Babe, to take me
away, it's no use. I may as well tell you now. This is prison. And you
must escape, yourself, before the gaoler comes back, or it will be a
life-sentence for you, too."
It warmed Victoria's heart that her sister should call her "Babe"--the
old pet name which brought the past back so vividly, that her eyes
filled again with tears.
"You shall not be kept in prison!" she exclaimed. "It's
monstrous--horrible! I was afraid it would be like this. That's why I
had to wait and make plenty of money. Dearest, I'm rich. Everything's
for you. You taught me to dance, and it's by dancing I've earned such a
lot--almost a fortune. So you see, it's yours. I've got enough to bribe
Cassim to let you go, if he likes money, and isn't kind to you. Because,
if he isn't kind, it must be a sign he doesn't love you, really."
Saidee laughed, a very bitter laugh. "He does like money. And he doesn't
like me at all--any more."
"Then--" Victoria's face brightened--"then he will take the ten thousand
dollars I've brought, and he'll let you go away with me."
"Ten thousand dollars!" Saidee laughed again. "Do you know who
Cassim--as you call him--is?"