The shutting of the door behind her sent a little shiver down Nedda’s spine; but the temperature of her soul was rising, and she looked round.  Beyond the heavy arch, beneath which she stood, was a courtyard where she could see two men, also in blue, with peaked caps.  Then, to her left, she became conscious of a shaven-headed noiseless being in drab-gray clothes, on hands and knees, scrubbing the end of a corridor.  Her tremor at the stealthy ugliness of this crouching figure yielded at once to a spasm of pity.  The man gave her a look, furtive, yet so charged with intense penetrating curiosity that it seemed to let her suddenly into innumerable secrets.  She felt as if the whole life of people shut away in silence and solitude were disclosed to her in the swift, unutterably alive look of this noiseless kneeling creature, riving out of her something to feed his soul and body on.  That look seemed to lick its lips.  It made her angry, made her miserable, with a feeling of pity she could hardly bear.  Tears, too startled to flow, darkened her eyes.  Poor man!  How he must hate her, who was free, and all fresh from the open world and the sun, and people to love and talk to!  The ‘poor man’ scrubbed on steadily, his ears standing out from his shaven head; then, dragging his knee-mat skew-ways, he took the chance to look at her again.  Perhaps because his dress and cap and stubble of hair and even the color of his face were so drab-gray, those little dark eyes seemed to her the most terribly living things she had ever seen.  She felt that they had taken her in from top to toe, clothed and unclothed, taken in the resentment she had felt and the pity she was feeling; they seemed at once to appeal, to attack, and to possess her ravenously, as though all the starved instincts in a whole prisoned world had rushed up and for a second stood outside their bars.  Then came the clank of keys, the eyes left her as swiftly as they had seized her, and he became again just that stealthy, noiseless creature scrubbing a stone floor.  And, shivering, Nedda thought: 

’I can’t bear myself here—­me with everything in the world I want—­and these with nothing!’

But the stout janitor was standing by her again, together with another man in blue, who said: 

“Now, miss; this way, please!”

And down that corridor they went.  Though she did not turn, she knew well that those eyes were following, still riving something from her; and she heaved a sigh of real relief when she was round a corner.  Through barred windows that had no glass she could see another court, where men in the same drab-gray clothes printed with arrows were walking one behind the other, making a sort of moving human hieroglyphic in the centre of the concrete floor.  Two warders with swords stood just outside its edge.  Some of those walking had their heads up, their chests expanded, some slouched along with heads almost resting on their chests; but most had their eyes fixed on the back of the neck of the man in front; and there was no sound save the tramp of feet.