_III.--The Darkness of a Prison_


A summer Sunday two years later. Alma and her child in a cornfield,
listening to bells ringing for Cyril's homecoming with his bride. All
the softness and youth gone from Alma's tragic face, and the last gleams
of penitence from her heart, since her perjury. Jealousy is prompting
her to go and tell Marion all. But Judkins comes and interrupts these
wild thoughts. He offers marriage, rehabilitation, and a home in
America. She hesitates. She is shunned by all, and can get no work in
Malbourne, but has not been destitute; money has found its way
mysteriously to her cottage. So for the child's sake she accepts.

Tea on the rectory lawn. Lilian is thinking of the prisoner, Lennie
wondering aloud, "How does Alma _like_ having to go to hell for lying
about Henry?" Cyril is terribly agitated at this. He has scarcely yet
recovered from his long mental illness after Henry's sentence. Marion is
_not happy_--she may never allude to Henry. The slightest reference to
him makes Cyril ill. Later, in the moonlight, Ingram Swaynestone asks
Lilian, whom he has always loved, to marry him. He cannot believe that
she is secretly engaged to Henry. She points towards Henry's prison. "I
am all that man has on earth, and I love him!" she says.

Nine years later. Convicts pulling down the old walls of Portsmouth. An
officer's funeral passes by. No. 62--Henry--overhears people speaking of
the manner of the officer's death, and his name, Major Everard. Tears
fall on the convict's hands as he works. No. 62's father is port
admiral. Alma's perjury in court had revealed all to Henry, and reduced