My legs dangled airily, and the black chasm of the
street seemed to yawn for me. For a moment I turned sick. I
recovered from that to feel desperate. I remembered that go
forward we must, bars or no bars. We could not regain our old
prison if we would.
It was equally clear that we could not go forward if the inmates
should object. On that narrow perch even Marie was helpless.
The bars of the window were close together. A woman, a child,
could disengage our hands, and then--I turned sick again. I
thought of the cruel stones. I glued my face to the bars, and
pushing aside a corner of the curtain, looked in.
There was only one person in the room--a woman, who was moving
about fully dressed, late as it was. The room was a mere attic,
the counterpart of that we had left. A box-bed with a canopy
roughly nailed over it stood in a corner. A couple of chairs
were by the hearth, and all seemed to speak of poverty and
bareness. Yet the woman whom we saw was richly dressed, though
her silks and velvets were disordered.
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