“I didn’t think I’d really like prison.  That was another thing I funked.  I’d heard such awful things about it, about the dirt, you know.  And there wasn’t any dirt in my cell, anyhow.  And after the crowds of women, after the meetings and the speeches, the endless talking and the boredom, that cell was like heaven.

“Thank God, it’s always solitary confinement.  The Government doesn’t know that if they want to make prison a deterrent they’ll shut us up together.  You won’t give the Home Secretary the tip, will you?

“But that isn’t what I wanted to tell you about.

“It was something bigger, something tremendous.  You’ll not believe this part of it, but I was absolutely happy in that cell.  It was a sort of deep-down unexcited happiness.  I’m not a bit religious, but I know how the nuns feel in their cells when they’ve given up everything and shut themselves up with God.  The cell was like a convent cell, you know, as narrow as that bit of shadow there is, and it had nice white-washed walls, and a planked-bed in the corner, and a window high, high up.  There ought to have been a crucifix on the wall above the plank-bed, but there wasn’t a crucifix.  There was only a shiny black Bible on the chair.

“Really Frank, if you’re to be shut up for a month with just one book, it had better be the Bible.  Isaiah’s ripping.  I can remember heaps of it:  ’in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.  And an highway shall be there ... the redeemed shall walk there:  and the ransomed of the Lord shall return with singing into Zion’ ...  ’They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.’  I used to read like anything; and I thought of things.  They sort of came to me.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you about.  The things that came to me were so much bigger than the thing I went in for.  I could see all along we weren’t going to get it that way.  And I knew we were going to get it some other way.  I don’t in the least know how, but it’ll be some big, tremendous way that’ll make all this fighting and fussing seem the rottenest game.  That was one of the things I used to think about.”

“Then,” he said, “you’ve given it up?  You’re corning out of it?”

She looked at him keenly.  “Are those still your conditions?”

He hesitated one second before he answered firmly.  “Yes, those are still my conditions.  You still won’t agree to them?”

“I still won’t agree.  It’s no use talking about it.  You don’t believe in freedom.  We’re incompatible.  We don’t stand for the same ideals.”

“Oh, Lord, what does that matter?”

“It matters most awfully.”

“I should have thought,” said Drayton, “it would have mattered more if I’d had revolting manners or an impediment in my speech or something.”