She awoke, startled, and a dozen laughed.

Myra had a great fear that the officer would see Joe.  But he didn’t.  He turned and went back to his post.

Myra watched eagerly—­aware of the fact that this scene was not as terrible to her as it might have been.  The experience of the day had sharpened her receptivity, broadened her out-look.  She took it for what it was worth.  She hated it, but she did not let it overmaster her.

There was much business going forward before the judge’s desk, and Myra had glimpses of the prisoners.  She saw one girl, bespectacled, hard, flashy, pushed to the bar, and suddenly heard her voice rise shrill and human above the drone-like buzzing of the crowd.

“You dirty liar; I’ll slap yer face if yer say that again!”

A moment later she was discharged, pushed through the little gateway, and came tripping by Myra, shouting shrilly: 

“I’ll make charges against him—­I’ll break him—­I will!”

Several others Myra saw.

A stumpy semi-idiot with shining, oily face and child-staring eyes, who clutched the railing with both big hands and stood comically in huge clothes, his eyes outgazing the judge.  He was suddenly yanked back to prison.

A collarless wife-beater, with hanging lips and pleading dog’s eyes, his stout Irish wife sobbing beside him.  He got “six months,” and his wife came sobbing past Myra.

Then there was an Italian peddler, alien, confused, and in rags, soon, however, to be set free; and next a jovial drunk, slapping the officers on the back, lifting his legs in dance-like motions and shouting to the judge.  He was lugged away for a night’s rest.

And then, of course, the women.  It was all terrible, new, undreamed of, to Myra.  She saw these careless Circes of the street, plumed, powdered, jeweled, and she saw the way the men handled and spoke to them.

Scene after scene went on, endless, confused, lost in the buzz and hum of voices, the shuffle of feet.  The air grew warmer and more and more foul.  Myra felt drowsy.  She longed to put her head on Joe’s shoulder and fall asleep—­sink into peace and stillness.  But time and again she came to with a jerk, started forward and eagerly scanned the faces for Rhona.  What had happened to the girl?  Would she be kept in jail overnight?  Or had something worse happened?  An increasing fear took possession of her.  She felt in the presence of enemies.  Joe was asleep.  She could not question him, could not be set at ease.  And how soundly he slept, breathing deeply, his head hanging far forward.  If only she could make a pillow for that tired head!

She was torn between many emotions.  Now she watched a scene beyond the netting—­something cynical, cheap, degrading—­watched it with no real sense of its meaning—­wondered where she was and how she had come—­and why all this was going on.  Then she would turn and look piteously at Joe, her face sharp with yearning.  Then she would drowse, and awake with a start.  She kept pinching herself.