, a
feeling of cool, fetid air, a flood of darkness, voices, and then she
knew no more. The matron who was stripping her and searching her had to
get cold water and wash her face....

Later Rhona found herself in a narrow cell, sitting in darkness at the
edge of a cot. Through the door came a torrent of high-pitched speech.

"Yer little tough, reform! reform! What yer mean by such carryings-on? I
know yer record. Beware of God, little devil...."

On and on it went, and Rhona, dazed, wondered what new terror it
foreboded. But then without warning the talk switched.

"Yer know who I am?"

"Who?" quavered Rhona.

"The matron."

"Yes?"

"I divorced him, I did."

"Yes."

"My husband, I'm telling yer. Are yer deef?"

Suddenly Rhona rose and rushed to the door.

"I want to send a message."

"By-and-by," said the matron, and her rum-reeking breath came full in
the girl's face. The matron was drunk.

For an hour she confided to Rhona the history of her married life, and
each time that Rhona dared cry, "I want to send a message!" she replied,
"By-and-by."

But after an hour was ended, she remembered.

"Message? Sure! Fifty cents!"

Rhona clutched the edge of the door.

"Telephone--I want to telephone!"

"Telephone!" shrieked the matron. "Do yer think we keep a telephone for
the likes of ye?"

"But I haven't fifty cents--besides, a message doesn't cost fifty
cents--"

"Are yer telling _me_?" the matron snorted. "Fifty cents! Come now,
hurry," she wheedled. "Yer know as yer has it! Oh, it's in good time you
come!"

Her last words were addressed to some one behind her. The cell door was
quickly opened; Rhona's arm was seized by John, the policeman, and
without words she was marched to the curb and pushed into the patrol
wagon with half a dozen others. The wagon clanged through the cold, dark
streets, darting through the icy edge of the wind, and the women huddled
together. Rhona never forgot how that miserable wagonful chattered--that
noise of clicking teeth, the pulse of indrawn sighs, and the shivering
of arms and chests. Closer and closer they drew, as if using one another
as shields against the arctic onslaught, a couple of poor women, and
four unsightly prostitutes, the scum of the lower Tenderloin. One woman
kept moaning jerkily:

"Wisht I was dead--down in my grave. It's bitter cold--"

The horses struck sparks against the pave, the wheels grided, and the
wagon-load went west, up the shadowy