s the
first waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradual
discovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside his
window to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn,
how did he bear them?

His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. The
egoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his.
He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not
thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did
he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he
accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through
the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against
him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one,
minister to him in his great need?

Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was suffering
voluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept hold
of the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot what
he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emerged
from behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that moment
in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love.

Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love for
him was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that
realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before
the trial, that she would not speak.

Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his
love for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He saw
that she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that she
was not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice which
would have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he saw
that. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she might
make it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had to
be gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she _did_ love him
in her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a _small_
sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into a
smaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too much
distress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that if
a slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she would
indubitably have made it.

After a year in prison