held.
Also she must take with her nothing of any kind to present to Sonya
Valesky. Their interview would be closely watched.

Naturally Barbara Meade insisted upon accompanying Nona. She knew, of
course, that she would not be allowed to see the prisoner, nor had she
the least wish to see her. But she could wait in some antechamber until
the ten minutes passed and then bring Nona safely back to their lodging
place. For certainly the experience ahead of her friend would be a
painful one, and although Nona did her best to conceal her nervousness
from the younger girl, Barbara again was not deluded.

When the two girls set out for the prison the next afternoon it would
have been difficult to decide which one most dreaded the ordeal. But in
truth the ordeal was in a way a mutual one. While she waited, doubtless
Barbara's imagination would paint as tragic a scene as Nona might be
obliged to go through with.

It seemed to Nona Davis, after leaving Barbara, that she walked down a
mile or more of corridor. The corridor might have been an underground
sewer, so dark and unwholesome were its sights and smells. It led past
dozens of small iron doors with locks and chains fastened on the
outside.

Finally Nona's guard paused before one of these doors and then opened
it. Inside was an iron grating with bars placed at intervals of about
six inches apart. The room it barricaded was six feet square and
contained a bed and stool. There was one small window overhead, not much
larger than a single pane of glass in an average old-fashioned window.

But the light from the window fell directly upon the head of the woman
who was seated beneath it.

Sonya Valesky had not been told that she was to receive a visitor. So
perhaps Nona did appear like a sudden vision of a Fra Angelico angel,
standing unexpectedly in the dark corridor with her hair as golden as a
shaft of sunlight.

Sonya only stared at the girl without speaking. But Nona saw that her
friend's dark hair, which had been a little streaked with gray at their
first meeting more than two years before, was now almost pure white.
However, Sonya did not look particularly ill or unhappy; her blue eyes
were still serene. Whatever faith in life she may have lost, she had not
lost faith in the cause for which she must suffer.

"Don't you know me, Sonya?" Nona asked almost timidly, as if she were
talking to a stranger.

Then the Russian woman came forward with all her former dignity an