The glow of my own happiness, however, triumphed over all else until bed time, when with a perversity born, I suppose, of the accumulated fatigue of recent days and nights, the one flaw in my sister’s visit came uppermost in my thoughts and possessed my brain with an unconquerable tyranny. Some days before the deputation, she had been in correspondence with a leading Conservative M.P., one whose lifelong belief in Woman Suffrage had become a little rusty. The questions he put to my sister proved that he had not kept pace with recent events in the movement and was unaware of the tremendous demand made by women themselves for the vote as evidenced by the resolutions, petitions, and unreceived deputations of organised societies of working and professional women, quite apart from the unions that had sprung up everywhere expressly in support of the Suffrage. I had sent her a collection of printed evidence to this effect for the benefit of her correspondent and I inquired of her eagerly that afternoon as to the result. She told me that she had unfortunately lost the papers. I was annoyed and wasted several minutes of our precious time together in reproof. The memory of my anger came back to me now in exaggerated dimensions. Why had I allowed myself to be reproachful to her? She had been so dear to me, so prompt and efficient in her efforts to come and see me, so comforting in her wealth of sympathy, and I had rewarded her with reproaches! As I went back over the scene, my heart was wrung with longing to send her some little message of good-will and my inability to do so appeared to me then as nothing short of a tragedy. For the fiftieth time in those first hours of imprisonment I seemed to be and to feel like a child, at the mercy of fluctuating emotions extreme in their intensity. I longed to be alone, but that night the ward patients kept unusually wide awake and I had to restrain myself over and over again. As the night wore on, the avenue of beds became less troubled, a sense of privacy grew in proportion and at last I gave way to my grief and sobbed. I covered my face in the bedclothes, but in spite of this precaution the wardress heard me and before long she came and stood by my side. I expected a scolding. She very seldom took any notice of the patients till morning, I knew it was her business to reprove me, but on looking up at her face I saw that the customary mask-like expression had vanished. She was kind, she inquired tenderly why I was crying, sat down on my bed and held my hands, told me that my sister would not remember my reproaches but would be unhappy if she knew of my present distress. She did not laugh at me, she showed as much sympathy as a friend. It was a great surprise. She stayed talking to me in whispers for a considerable time, though looking continually towards the door as if in fear of being detected in a kindness, for through the night as through the day, she was liable to unseen inspection through the locked gate and open door, or through the spy-hole of the door when closed. I was most deeply grateful to her, it was a delightful discovery that underneath her rigid exterior she was an unspoiled human being. I longed to return her kindness and ventured to propose that I should rub her chest to ease her hacking cough. At first she would not hear of it, but at last, after I had fetched some ointment from the bed-head of one of the patients who had a cough, she consented and allowed me to open her dress. She seemed much afraid and told me she would probably be dismissed if we were seen. My attempts to allay her distress eased my own mind of its childish trouble, for which reason she had probably allowed me to help her. I would gladly have talked to her all night about prisoners, the working conditions of wardresses, her own life, but this, of course, was forbidden. She soon went back to her table, her face resumed its former expression and I never again held any intercourse with her. If the horrors of prison existence are enshrined in an atmosphere of nightmare, the rare happy moments have the glamour of a good dream. This kind act of the night-wardress remains as one of the sunlit flower patches of my time in Holloway.