And this nervousness
had latterly been increased to terror by what she had learned
from her fellow-outcasts--the hideous tales of oppression, of
robbery, of bodily and moral degradation. But all this terror
had been purely fanciful, as any emotion not of experience
proves to be when experience evokes the reality. At that
touch, at the sound of those rough words--at that _reality_ of
the terror she had imagined from the days when she went to work
at Matson's and to live with the Brashears, she straightway
lost consciousness. When her senses returned she was in a
cell, lying on a wooden bench.
There must have been some sort of wild struggle; for her
clothes were muddy, her hat was crushed into shapelessness, her
veil was so torn that she had difficulty in arranging it to act
as any sort of concealment. Though she had no mirror at which
to discover the consolation, she need have had no fear of being
recognized, so distorted were all her features by the frightful
paroxysms of grief that swept and ravaged her body that night.
She fainted again when they led her out to put her in the wagon.
She fainted a third time when she heard her name--"Queenie
Brown"--bellowed out by the court officer. They shook her into
consciousness, led her to the court-room. She was conscious of
a stifling heat, of a curious crowd staring at her with eyes
which seemed to bore red hot holes into her flesh.
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