Always, this
mysterious, invisible, yet horribly potent, power of sin was like
a miasma throughout the prison. Always, it was striving to reach
her soul, to make her of its own. She fought the insidious,
fetid force as best she might. She was not evil by nature. She
had been well grounded in principles of righteousness.
Nevertheless, though she maintained the integrity of her
character, that character suffered from the taint. There
developed over the girl's original sensibility a shell of
hardness, which in time would surely come to make her less
scrupulous in her reckoning of right and wrong.
Yet, as a rule, character remains the same throughout life as to
its prime essentials, and, in this case, Mary Turner at the end
of her term was vitally almost as wholesome as on the day when
she began the serving of the sentence. The change wrought in her
was chiefly of an external sort. The kindliness of her heart and
her desire for the seemly joys of life were unweakened. But over
the better qualities of her nature was now spread a crust of
worldly hardness, a denial of appeal to her sensibilities.
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