I

"In the prison house are many mansions. This one looks very nice—thank the good Sheriff for me, for us, Cecil. Is it wired for sound?"

"No, dear, it's just an office. Sheriff's working late down the hall—records room—and said we could have this. Nobody'll bother us."

"May I sit at the desk and judge humanity?"

"Why not?"

"Or I'll be a lady of the Abbey of Theleme, where the law was 'Do what thou wilt.' No—can't have anything like that going on in the Sheriff's own office. And still—flowers on the desk?"

"The explanation is anticlimax. Sheriff's good-looking, has a devoted secretary, her brother-in-law runs a florist's shop."

"Like that. Never mind, I hereby make-believe the flowers are for me, the blood-red roses and the little white ones, sweet hot-house children. Not quite real, are they?—no black-spot, no bitten leaves, sheltered children, I guess they don't understand. But I'll make-believe. Am I occasionally beautiful, Cecil?"

"To me, always."

"I've always loved words, you know. It amounts to a fault. I can't make them do as I wish. I could never write. I don't know enough about people, maybe never shall. But I know the power of words. You say I'm beautiful to you, and that makes me so, I believe it, the words shut away everything foreign to the Abbey of Theleme—no, that's not where we are. But isn't it strange what words can do? Comfort and terrify, heal and kill. Make out of nothing, something, and another word can send the something back to a nothing. It was my father's gift, that love of words. I was reading precociously at least a year before he died. Mother (who is definitely literate and past president of the local PTA, no kidding) felt it wasn't quite right at such an age."

"What's that paper? Are you tearing it?"

"Just a blank sheet the good Sheriff left on his desk. I hope he won't miss it. Not tearing, love, building. It's my crown, Cecil. I need a pin. Is that a pin in your lapel?"

"Yes—here."

"Thanks. That'll do it. Ouch! Well, nothing created without pain. How does it look?"

"Royal."

"Does it suit my complexion?"

"White and ivory—yes, not bad."

"Is it all right for a queen to suck a pin-pricked finger?"

"Rank has its privileges."

"Good. So, not a lady of Theleme but a mere queen, I'll do my best while I have authority. This object shaped like a ruler is my scepter, and this apparent ink-bottle—no, if rank has its privileges, we'll omit the orb and you give me a cigarette. You may light it for me, and remember you have the right at any time to be seated in my presence. My lord, do you have any defense to set forth in favor of this mewling monster, this three-billion-headed lurching mooncalf humanity?"

"Your Majesty, I must first know what specific charges have been made."

"Item, he stinks of shrewd stupidity like his father Caliban."

"A fault that might be remedied by going to school a few thousand years more; at least there's manifest intelligence."

"Latent, you mean, don't you?"

"Mostly latent, but a good deal of it overt, liberated."

"Item, his fears are inconsistent: he's afraid of the dark but quite ready to play with matches."

"Another trait of childhood."

"Also of masturbating monkeys. Item, he talks a great deal about truth, but in the end, what he believes is what he wishes to believe."

"At that point I must draw your Majesty's attention to an essential point in the original indictment, namely the admission that this monster possesses roughly three billion heads. And three billion bodies. In that view of it, it's good law as well as necessary charity to insist that each head-and-body unit of the monster be tried separately."

"There isn't time, sir, there isn't time. Are you implying that not everyone is snotty?"

"Something like that."

"But then we can have no trial. No trial, no justice, no fun. Ah, damn it, I was looking forward to a hanging, with a bang-up speech from the platform and not a dry eye in the entire public square except for a few pickpockets and sellers of soft drinks."

"Callista—"

"Sir! No—fair enough. I'll put my scepter down. Maybe I'm tired of being queen. But may I keep my crown a while?"

"You've always worn it."

"No. No. Bring your chair—no, take this one, Cecil. I'd like to sit on the floor with my head on your knee—not that you're like my father at all. My crown—oh, put it away somewhere, keep it, I don't care. I don't hear that wind any more. Is it turning cold?"

"Yes, it's quite cold tonight. Callista, the prosecution will finish tomorrow, with the reading of those letters. We'll probably open after the noon recess.... Is there anything, anything at all, you haven't told me?"

"Yes."

"You said, in court today, you said there was something."

"Yes. Why did you stop moving your hand over my hair? I loved it. That's better. Cecil, I am guilty."

"The—blank?"

"Yes. Haven't you almost known it all along?"

"No. But I've been afraid you might remember something, or convince yourself that you've remembered it, and so come to believe yourself guilty."

"Oh, Cecil, this isn't belief, this is knowledge. You're trying to give me a way out before you even hear. It's like this: it came back as a clear auditory memory, the dull noise of that bottle being pulled forward on the shelf, and the cork, and a clink of glass, then the tap of her little high heels outside the bedroom door. I remembered what she said, each word very clear in that high sweet voice of hers: 'Callie, come on now!—I poured a little drink for you.' That's how it was, Cecil. And I lay still. I didn't speak. Knowing what might happen. I won't say, wishing for it to happen, but knowing, Cecil. Oh, sure enough, my mind squirmed around a bit trying to imagine the drink was from an innocent bourbon bottle, but knew all the time that the bourbon had been emptied the week before and the bottle thrown away. I'm no split personality, Cecil. Call it a paralysis from conflicting drives, if you want to. The self that had no wish to murder was the same self that—that hated her guts and wished she was dead. So I lay still. And my brain began generating the smoke-screen, first the useless fraud about a bourbon bottle that wasn't there, then the amnesia."

"I don't believe you hated her guts, Callista. She was a frustration, someone in the way, as T.J. would insist on saying, has said in fact. But I don't think you hated her as a person."

"Not for long, but long enough. I killed her."

"That was a thing that happened. You did not will it to happen. You were sick, bewildered, temporarily unable to prevent it from happening. If you'd been out in the living-room with her—do you remember that bronze paper-knife you kept on the table, a handsome thing with a sharp point? She was small, slight, your arms are strong. You know you could never in the world have taken it up against her."

"Why, dear apologist, you're only saying that I'm a coward about physical violence. I killed her by lying still. She's as dead as if I'd taken that knife to her. I say the guilt is greater. Seeing red might have excused me, or so most people would say. My very cowardice, weakness, retreat—that's what killed her. Cecil, I killed her by a failure in simple decency and common sense. If I'd been decent, sensible, I'd have run out there the moment I heard that bottle move on the shelf."

"Callista, if the good, the righteous, the respectable were half as stern in self-judgment as you are—"

"Oh, there'd be no living with them at all. Mother's a Colonial something-or-other because some worm-eaten ancestor was a Saint in the Bay Colony. I think Father must have laughed at it, but I was too young to get the point. The Puritan in me gives many a squirm. But the point is, my self-judgment serves no one now—she's dead. Well, it seems to be a jury of the righteous and respectable, more or less, who are stern enough in judging others, I've noticed. Cecil, will you give me a sharp honest answer to a question you don't want me to ask?"

"I'll try."

"Do you think we have a chance?"

"Of course we have a chance. Today was bad. They'll go on feeling Judd's collapse, in spite of common sense, in spite of everything. The poor guy couldn't have done us more harm if he'd been trying. T.J. will manage to drop in some apparently inadvertent reminder of it, no doubt in his closing speech when I'm done talking—hell, mere mention of Judd's name in a baritone tremolo would be enough, and there's no legal barrier against that. Terence will charge the jury again to forget it, and most of them will honestly try to, which would mean something only if people knew how to watch their own minds. And today was bad because this was the day when they laid out the heavy circumstantial stuff, proving your episode with Jim, making it official on the aconite, all that. But now, dear, so far as evidence is concerned, T.J. has finished, done his worst. Those letters to be read tomorrow aren't evidence. T.J. just thinks they are. He'll try to interpret them as indicating premeditation as well as motive; I know better, and I think I can make that fly up and hit him in the face, in my own closing speech or sooner. I'm not painting it bright for you, Callista. It's not bright. But we have a chance. There is this: with your story clearly told—as it has been already, really, in that Lamson interrogation—it passes my understanding how anyone in his right mind could find first degree."

"Mr. Lamson had the answer. Remember?—'the fact is, my dear girl, we just don't believe your story.'"

"Hell with Butch Lamson—he's not the jury."

"You think they might find second degree?"

"That could happen. The only just verdict would be involuntary man-slaughter."

"My love, can't you hear me? I've told you, I am guilty. Twenty to life. What do people feel when they cry out 'O God! O God!'—does the sound do something for them?"

"I don't know, Callista. I was never religious. Were you, ever?"

"Not for real, I guess. Away back, soon after Father died, I think the fluff and tinsel mythology of Sunday school had some hold on me for a short while. But I kept remembering a few of Father's comments, spoken when I was too young to get the point. They fell into place finally, made sense. When I was thirteen I told Mother I wasn't going to make the motions any more. Stuck it out, too, with a bit of surprising help from Herb. One of the rare times I've seen him lose his temper—popped half-way out of the armchair while Mother was lecturing, and said: 'God damn it, Vic, let the kid do her own thinking! She will anyway.' I could've loved him for that, if he hadn't lapsed back into being Herb Chalmers—if he wasn't a stepfather—if I wasn't a crossgrained bitch who never knows how to make advances at the right time. Well, that time Mother was so startled the artillery just didn't function. She went meek, maybe to see what Herb would do next—which was nothing. But also she never bothered me about it again, much. I suppose because her own religion is pure social conformity. If she'd had any serious convictions I might have had a battle on my hands. Twenty to life. What happens tomorrow?"

"The letters first. We sit quiet and hear them. I can't ask you to display anything you don't feel, Callista—as an actress, my dear, you're nowhere. But if you feel—well, indifferent about those letters; if it seems all far away and irrelevant, don't let your face shout to the jury that you feel that way."

"I'll be thinking of the briers. They'll read no indifference in me then, I think."

"The briers—"

"Where I lost my baby, Cecil. Some little tree whipped me across the face when I was leaving there—a birch, I think. I remember I was superstitiously grateful, glad of the sting. A primitive game, Cecil, the mind snatching at notions of punishment and atonement. We're still savages, and I suppose some of the time there's no harm in it. As if the birch tree—the whole dark place, and the thorns—had accomplished enough of the punishment so that I could meet the rest well enough. And maybe the savage, the poor greasy primordial Eve down inside, would say that I have, so far. After the letters, the State rests?"

"I expect it. Hunter doesn't bother much with surprises—not his method. The State rests, and I move they dismiss the case, and Terence will deny the motion because he must."

"Part of the ritual?"

"In a way. We open then, probably after an early noon recess. The defense is going to be brief, Callista. It's better that way. We have only a few things to say. Reiterating them too much might turn the jury against us. They've heard the essence of the defense already, in my remarks, the cross-examinations, the Lamson interrogation. We mustn't repeat ourselves too much, because—well, heaven help any defendant if the jury is bored. What's happened is that, in effect, we're required to prove a negative. In the sense of tangible proof, on the same level as—oh, say Peterson's photographs—the thing is impossible. Proving a negative usually is, and that's fairly common knowledge among people who think at all. I'll bear down on it when I talk to them in closing, and before then. We must also insist on the element of reasonable doubt. I can see that Terence is very much aware of that aspect, and you must have noticed how he's given us every break he possibly could. Including some that surprised me. I shall open the defense by calling Edith. She's prepared to say anything at all that might help you, and if T.J. tries to get tough with her in cross-examination I'm sorry for him, that's all. She'll make a monkey out of him, and I believe she'll remember the jury every minute while she does it. In her direct testimony, the thing that will help most will be her emphasis on that suicidal depression."

"Haven't I already told Mr. Lamson that no one else knew of it?"

"Yes, but Edith did know, don't you think?"

"She knew I was unhappy."

"She's told me that you gave her the story about Jim, after that damn letter of his."

"Yes, I went to pieces too, that once. But at that time I wasn't even quite certain yet about the pregnancy. As for the suicide thing, why, I wasn't consciously thinking in those terms until the day of the picnic. It was all over, you know, but I'm female enough so I didn't enjoy watching Jim the tender husband and Ann acting like a new bride, Jim all braced to speak to me politely but hoping to God he wouldn't have to—and also wanting to—yes, I could feel that. So I wandered off into that part of the garden. It wasn't till I noticed the monkshood plants that I started telling myself how that way wouldn't hurt. Then I was digging up two or three, just to look at them. I nibbled at one, and spat it out."

"You saw Edith every day that week, didn't you? Went to the studio as usual?"

"Yes."

"Oh, she knew you were in the depths. She loves you. Your moods aren't the mystery to her that they are to most people, Callista. As for her factual knowledge—well, you might as well be prepared to hear her exaggerate that a little, even lie some about how much she knew if she thinks it will help you."

"I'm strangely rich and fortunate. I have two friends."

"I wish we were stronger. Well, after Edith testifies, then you, if you will promise me one thing—two things."

"One, that I shall not say I am guilty."

"Yes. The other is that when Hunter is attacking you, as he will, without mercy and with every trick he knows, you'll remember that you, and your friends, desire you to live."

"That I can promise. The other—"

"Callista, look up at me."

"Not yet. In a moment."

"Tell me this: is there any virtue, any rational good, in declaring a literal truth when misinterpretation is inevitable, when you know to a certainty that your hearers cannot grasp the whole truth nor keep the partial truth in proportion, nor even guess at the background, the related truths?"

"Virtue—rational good—I'm too confused, Cecil. Other thoughts. I don't know. I suppose not."

"You call yourself guilty—of a momentary lapse that happened to end in disaster. But if you say that much, the jury will inevitably charge you with a different sort of guilt. They will say: she brooded and planned to murder her lover's wife, the old story—let her burn! But is it right, reasonable, is it anything but insane, that for such a lapse, when you were sick in mind and body, you should be strapped in a chair and the life burned out of you?"

"You can frighten me, Cecil. It's strange. I don't think the brute fact has really frightened me before, not completely. It wasn't real."

"It's real. I was trying to frighten you. You must not say on the stand what you've said to me tonight. I know it to be truth, because you've said it to me. Telling it to the jury will not serve truth, because their minds will make a lie of it. Look up at me now."

"I'll promise it, I think—for a bargain. I'll lie by silence, in return for a promise from you."

"A promise—what is it, Callista?"

"Promise me that if I am acquitted, I may come to you, live with you—in marriage or not, it doesn't matter—love you and care for you so long as I can have you. Give me that, and then I will lie, I'll swear anything to save my life, I'll be such an actress—"

"Now I can look up at you. Now I know that what Edith said is true: living is journeying, and love's a region we can enter for a while."

"Yes, a region that changes if only because we do ourselves. Some try to prevent that, I suppose. They want it to be a closed room thick with perfume and curtains drawn against all weather, against night and day."

"But when I come to you—you've promised it—I'll make it a region of summer, of morning and summer evening and every star at night."

II

COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS
OF WINCHESTER COUNTY, NEW ESSEX

December 10, 1959

Action: People vs. Callista Blake; Justice Terence Mann presiding.

Court in session at 0956.

JUDGE MANN: Do I understand, Mr. Hunter, that you wish to have read to the jury the letters that were admitted in evidence before adjournment yesterday?

MR. HUNTER: Yes, your Honor. I am prepared to read—to go ahead with that right away.

JUDGE MANN: Let them be read by the clerk of the court.

MR. DELEHANTY: Your Honor, I have a—not laryngitis exactly, but a sort of cold. I'm perfectly ready to do as the Court directs, only I'm afraid that with this cold or whatever it is, maybe my voice won't be too clear to the jury.

JUDGE MANN: Well ... Yes, Mr. Warner?

MR. WARNER: Your Honor, the defense will not object to a reading of these letters by Mr. Hunter himself. I am certain my learned colleague would never take any improper advantage of his dramatic ability, admittedly great. Very often, however, written words are capable of conveying different meanings according to where the emphasis is placed, not because of any willful misconstruction, but simply because our language is not always a precise instrument. Therefore I would only stipulate, request rather, that if there should be any doubt in my mind, or in my client's mind, that the meaning of the letters is being correctly conveyed, we may have the privilege of interrupting the reading at that point, to indicate what we believe is the right interpretation.

JUDGE MANN: Is that agreeable to you, Mr. Hunter?

MR. HUNTER: Yes, your Honor, so long as the interruptions have to do with important points, not trivialities.

MR. WARNER: Sir, there are no trivialities in this case.

MR. HUNTER: Subject to the limitation I mentioned, the request of the defense appears reasonable, and I will not argue it.

JUDGE MANN: You may proceed, Mr. Hunter.

MR. HUNTER: The first of these letters, acknowledged by the defense to have been written by Callista Blake to James Doherty, is dated the 10th of May, 1959. Members of the jury, my dramatic ability is not, as Mr. Warner has described it, great. Any drama here is provided by the force of events, not by me. I must simply ask you to remember, while you hear these letters, that they (that is, the first three and the fifth) were written by a girl nineteen years of age, in the summer of this year, under the influence of a love affair which the testimony of witnesses has established and the defense has not denied. The first letter reads as follows:

"Jimmy—

"Tonight I cannot see you—that was really all I understood over the telephone, though I know you gave me the decent sensible reasons why you cannot come—something about work at the office, wasn't it?—for as soon as I heard you say that, I thought, Oh, bang goes the whole batch of cookies. You see, I was going to be domestic for you tonight, and I had just taken some cookies from the oven when you phoned—the airy egg-white kind, a sort of culinary idiocy because no damn good the next day, like letting air out of a tire. Therefore if I were a weeping wench they would now be soaked in brine and serve you right. But I never weep, Jimmy. Never. Remember that. So, since you cannot come, I will only count over the times I've had you with me, a miser adoring the sparkle and fall of jewels through her fingers. While you are submerged in the honest dreadfulness of whatever you do at the office—what the devil is it anyhow?—do you convey subtle conveyances and do dark deeds (these are puns) or just sit with your feet up and brood over Deals?—think of me playing with my pretties and having a better time than yourself, because this is all I can wish to do when you're away from me. Because I love you.

"It occurs to me, I never wrote to you before. You may not like me on paper. I sprawl and ramble, Dearest. Don't mind my doodling either—see the border I drew around your true name while I daydreamed and my pen was thinking for me? I'm only surprised it wasn't a tangle of Cupids, an out-of-season Valentine, and maybe it will be yet. In my here-and-now mood I would draw them saucy, I think (most of them), strutting and romping and showing off their little male apostrophes—all, I suppose, with a sneaking resemblance to you. Because I love you.

"No, don't say it's reckless and foolish of me to write at all—I know it. I can't care, not now. I tell you, Jimmy, what we have (is it possible it's only ten days?) is something that could not happen with Ann. Or anywhere in her world. I tell myself, I am not she, she is not me, my love (you know it) is nothing like what could happen for you with anyone but me. And there's my cure for jealousy—if I could apply it, if I could make my head rule me a little more, my crazy heart a little less. I want you, I'm empty and dull in your absence, tonight this is the only way I can talk to you. So let me talk, and think me foolish and reckless, and destroy this scrawled thing if you think best. It's me, though. Remember when you throw it away, it's me. And perhaps (because I love you) I wouldn't like you to burn me.

"More than you have already.

"Yes, I will type the envelope and mark it PERSONAL, lest the chaste eyes of Miss Anderson be stricken unto confusion and dismay. Damn 'em, why hasn't the Postoffice a Bureau of Hollow Oaks? Ooh—now I think of it, there is—not an oak, but a big maple with a hole in the trunk about seven feet above ground, on the path between your house and Mother's, near the pond. I saw a squirrel in residence there last year, stuck his head out and told me with the usual fuss that it was his'n. No good, I guess, because he's probably still there, and would think poorly of anyone dropping a letter into his living-room. He'd eat it or use it for nest-lining. That's how Nature is, you know, not a bit cooperative with the frills of romance, only with the essentials—but there, how cooperative indeed! As if, so far as Nature cares, every atom, every motion of life were aimed at nothing but the mounting of female by male and the begetting of young. Well, it comes to me that you with your long legs could reach that hole in the maple, though I'd have to stand on something. It comes to me that a letter could be squirrel-proofed in a metal box. Let us reflect on this."

Members of the jury, I might say in passing that because of this mention in the letter, the maple tree in question was examined. It does have a hole in it, nearer eight feet above ground than seven. Nothing was found there except an abandoned squirrel's nest; no sign of any previous disturbance by a human agency. [Laughter by the defendant.] I see Miss Blake is amused, which is her privilege I suppose. [Disturbance at rear of room, a man (James Doherty) leaving his seat for the exit; Mr. Hunter waiting for quiet.] The letter resumes:

"I love you as a sleeping seed in the earth must love the rains of spring, blindly, thoughtlessly, responding because it must—the shell breaks underground from the inward pressure, the outer warmth and fertile moisture. Shall I one day become a flower for you and know the sun? I am still in the dark, and rather blind, and yet happy to be living. You my awakener, it seems to me you're finding no such happiness. Am I too much for you, Jimmy? Too weird and different? Poor Jimmy, did you want only that May-day moment, and then discover the dryad had caught you fast and would not let go? There are thorns in my branches, I suppose. I never wanted them to wound. Oh, I must write no more like this, or I'll be needing you too much to sleep.

"Don't look distressed, as you did last night, and ask me, what are we to do? I don't know yet, Jimmy. There's an answer and we'll find it somehow. Likely it will be you that finds it, and not myself. I don't know. Maybe I'd never try to tell you what to do, even if I were inwardly certain what was best. May-day, it seemed ridiculous to me that anything about this could be a solemn Problem—no more a problem than the romping of animals. It is, of course—I merely had to shove that aside (without regrets) for the sake of May-day. It is, and I—(here comes a truth, my darling, that may be unwelcome or distressing; if it is, just set it down to my weirdness and forgive me for it)—I am, in many important ways, a much more civilized human creature than you. So civilized—so wide a gap between the cool life of the mind and the violence of that primitive part which never grows civilized in anyone—that I can never hope to explain myself, or be anything but a stranger to the easy routines of existence. My mind looks down on both of us, Jimmy, sees well enough that we are foolish lovers running into the jungle blind—(running, I will not say driven)—and inviting disaster in everything we do. But if now I only glimpsed you or heard your voice—why, away with all thought, the self you roused up on our May-day would be mad for you, throw away all sober knowledge, bite your throat, dance like a maynad and burn your flesh in a blaze of love."

DEFENDANT: The word is "maenad," if it matters.

MR. HUNTER: I stand corrected, I suppose. May it please the Court, my understanding was that any interruption of this reading would be made by counsel, in an orderly manner, not by the accused who is not at present under oath.

JUDGE MANN: It must be so ordered. I hope you understand the legal necessity, Miss Blake. If any other point comes up, please draw your counsel's attention and let him deal with it. That is the method required of us here. Incidentally, if anything during this reading makes it desirable for you to confer at any length with Mr. Warner, a short recess can always be requested, and the Court stands ready to allow it. Go ahead, Mr. Hunter.

MR. HUNTER: Well, the first letter is nearly finished. It concludes with these words:

"Understand, Jimmy, that I fit no pattern. No one can own me, no one can make me over. I was born a heretic and so live. No one can catch me except if I will.

"I love you.
"Callista."

The second letter, also from Callista Blake to James Doherty, bears no date except Thursday, but it is in an envelope marked PERSONAL, addressed in typing to Mr. Doherty at his office at Judd and Doherty, 12 Somerset Street, Winchester. The postmark on this envelope is June 18th. It reads as follows:

"Dear—

"More than a month ago I wrote you a letter, and I remember that although you didn't say so, you weren't exactly pleased at my doing it. So I am reckless, but look, love, the heavens didn't fall, the grass is still green and soft (as we should know) and so here I go again, because I want to take advantage of an evening when I seem to be fairly clear-headed, or as near it as I ever am. Anyway, darling, you told me Miss Anderson is out with a cold, so this is sure to pass through no hands but yours, isn't it?

"Jimmy, I can almost wish that Ann did know. Don't blow your top—caution will prevail. I'm just wishing. The fact of secrecy I don't particularly mind—what business of anyone else is it that I love you? I don't care about parading you before the world in a proper woman's look-what-I-caught manner—that's nothing, to me there's even a kind of indecency in public possessiveness. But I do mind the limitations and humiliations of secrecy, the haunting by social fears, enforced furtiveness—can't go alone into a restaurant with you, where some friend of yours and Ann's might notice you together with that screwball broad with the limp. That I hate. It's a spoiling thing. I wonder more and more whether we are big enough to stand much more of it. And yet if you tire of me, or if the dreary social pressure forces you away from me—I swear the world's turning into one big God-damned suburb—I don't know what will happen to me. I don't know if I'm big enough to take it. I suppose I am. I just don't know.

"Please tell me: is your own religious feeling so strong that you do actually feel sinful when you're with me? I hardly dared write that. Do you realize how badly you hedged when I asked you almost the same thing two nights ago? I wasn't asking about Ann's views, blast you—I know she'd condemn the whole thing without a moment's pause for thought—I wanted to find out how it was with you, but all you could talk about was how Ann would feel. Well, I picked the wrong time of course. A real feminine trick, to cross-examine you with your head on my breast and only a few minutes after the little death. Bitchy of me, I suppose I was going by instinct, and when I do that, bitchy is my middle name. But see, dear, everything's calm now, I'm not whispering in your ear, I'm only fumbling for words on paper. I suppose you do know, don't you, that if you had to be free of me I would let you go? The dryad's thorns would scratch some—that I couldn't help, couldn't help your bleeding a bit—but they couldn't hold you, and would not. I don't want you as a prisoner. You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you free.

MR. WARNER: I will call the jury's attention to the fact that there is no actual break in the letter at the point where Mr. Hunter stopped reading. The thought there is incomplete, and Miss Blake went on to complete it in the same paragraph.

MR. HUNTER: I will call the jury's attention to the fact that I have been reading a rather difficult handwriting for several minutes, and am slightly hoarse. I would also point out that it is the end of a page, and the indentation at the beginning of the next page looks to me very much like the beginning of a paragraph.

MR. WARNER: Mr. District Attorney, you must have noticed that Miss Blake's writing does not make a very precise left-hand margin, but the paragraph indentations are characteristically quite deep.

MR. HUNTER: Very well—I don't want to argue a point like this—it's all one paragraph if you like. May I continue?

MR. WARNER: By all means, finish the paragraph.

MR. HUNTER (reading):

"... No, I don't hate Ann, I was not thinking only of Ann when I wrote that.

"Another thing, by the way, that I hardly dared to write.

"Jimmy, I need to know: if Ann would allow a separation, and if we went somewhere—no matter where, so it's a long way off—would you be mentally, emotionally able to live with me? Look into yourself. Tell me, if you can, what would happen inside you, supposing the situation was like that. Make it far away—Arizona, Tahiti, island of Capri, who cares?—and I am with you, in your bed at night and with you in all the long bright days. Would you see me still as a human woman who loves you and who would be happy to bear you children?—that could be, you know; a doctor assured me of it a couple of years ago, the little deformity is no obstacle. Or would I become the whore who 'led you astray' and 'wrecked your life'?

"You know, Jimmy, it hasn't seemed to me (but I could be so damned wrong!) that religion goes very deep with you. Isn't it mostly a matter of being brought up in a certain way that automatically shuts out other views without seriously examining them? I'm trying to suggest that unlike Ann, you're really not embedded in religion like a fly in amber. I've made no secret of my own agnosticism with you—wouldn't have occurred to me to do so—and that hasn't appeared to trouble you particularly. You do shy away, you don't like the topic, I suppose you feel the way so many people do nowadays, that religion is all right but talking about it is not quite nice. But I can't imagine that you condemn me in your heart (do you?) for relying on my own reason, being unafraid of doubt, interested in proof, critical of all self-appointed authority?

"So I'll even dare ask you: just where is the mercy, the rationale, the loving-kindness, in an ethical-religious system that makes me a whore bound for hell because I love you and welcome intercourse with you and want to live with you?

"I want to see you tomorrow, Jimmy. You spoke of having to work late because of Miss Anderson's being out sick—may I come there in the evening, just to see you for a few minutes? I'll be well-behaved (I hope). There are one or two other things—things even I don't care to scrawl on paper. If you call and say I mustn't come, of course I won't, but—please?

"For the first time in our experience I shall be listening for the phone and hoping you don't call. 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'—I can't, I can't.

"Callista."

The third letter, members of the jury, is again from Callista Blake to James Doherty. It is dated June 25th, just a week later than the one I last read, and was addressed, like the other two, to Mr. Doherty at his office. It reads as follows:

"Jimmy—

"Didn't you say you would call me Monday evening? What happened? I remember you said you would be tied up over the week end—if only my silly hungry arms had been the rope to tie you!—well, so I counted the hours to Monday evening, and glued myself to the phone, but no Jimmy. I know I mustn't call your house—you needn't have reminded me of that, last Friday! Tuesday, though, I did try to call you at the office—I'm sorry, Jimmy, I know you didn't want me to, but I was miserable, I had to try to reach you somehow—but you were out, anyway Mr. Judd answered the phone and said you were, and he sounded so chilly—am I a black cat across his path or something?—I didn't know he disliked me. What's happening, Jimmy? Could be purely my nerved-up imagination. But all week, no Jimmy. Couldn't you at least have got as far as a phone booth? Oh hell, I'm writing like a sniveling brat.

"Lately I've been having too many morbid thoughts. I know I behaved badly Friday evening—you didn't want anything to get started, and I had to act like a whining bitch in heat. You should know there's more to me than that—I guess you do, I guess you do. Well, since that evening I've now and then thought of us—I even dreamed something of the kind—as if we were no wiser than a pair of kids slipping out behind the barn to study the difference between a boy and a girl—with peevish grown-ups likely to come around the corner of the building any minute. I've lost some of the dream—I think we did get caught and stood there frozen waiting for the wrath. Only the boy in the dream wasn't quite you. Be jealous, damn you.

"Are we so terribly far apart? I'm beginning to understand there's plenty about me you don't even like. It's not strange. Didn't I tell you at the start, or try to, that I'm not easy to get along with? I often have a bad enough time trying to get along with myself. But Jimmy, Dearest, all people are far apart in a lot of important ways. No exceptions. And all people have elements in common too, things they can share, use to bridge the gulf between self and self, if they only knew it. Don't you think we have enough in common so that if we both tried hard and honestly and lovingly, we could live happily together?

"I know, I know—I wrote that as if I were assuming that Ann would set you free. Oh, I like you and don't like you, for not wanting to talk about her with me. Like you for it because I know it's loyalty, you're trying to be fair to her, spare her pain, you still love her in many ways—and somehow I know about all of them, and respect every one of them whether you believe that or not. And dislike it, it hurts, because—well, because I happen to be the one under the gun, Jimmy, and I keep thinking if I knew more about her I might see my own way better. I love you in ways she never imagined, couldn't imagine. She's not a passionate woman, Jimmy—as I don't suppose you need to be told. She's sweet, possessive, domestic, good to you so far as she knows how to be, loves you in her fashion so long as you conform to what she wants you to be. Undoubtedly it troubles her that you haven't happened to have children yet. Loves you in her fashion—oh, Jimmy, to my thinking, and I'm not a fool, loving an image of what you'd like another person to be, that's not love at all, just self-love and arrogance.

"Am I doing it too? Am I in love with what I wish you were? I mustn't always shy away from that thought—I'll have to look at it straight some time, can't now somehow, not now, not now. I don't think it's true. Anyway I will assure you, pretty Ann never woke up at night whimpering your name and tasting blood on her lip.

"There's no solution that won't hurt somebody. I'm selfish too—like you, like Ann if she knew and understood, I don't want to be hurt any more than I have been. I don't hate Ann, I don't want to hate her. I don't want anything except to get away somewhere with you—are we savages to be held in line by magic words mumbled in the mouth of a priest?—because I love you best and need you.

"Silence is the cruelest of a coward's weapons. It's not like you to use it against me. Please write, or call me. Please come to me.

"Callista."

The fourth letter is typed, dated July 5th, 1959, and signed only with a typed capital J. You remember yesterday Mr. Lamson testified that James Doherty himself, as well as Miss Blake, acknowledged his authorship of this letter. It reads:

"Dear Callista:

"I meant to write to you sooner, but have been very busy, so am afraid the time has slipped by, besides I do not know just how to say what I ought to, except that we must relinquish the prospect we have discussed and that you mention in your letter, as it would not work out for the best but am afraid would have bad consequences to all concerned. I consider myself very much to blame having given you a wrong idea of the situation, although that certainly was not my intention. I think all we can do is try to forget about it, because that is what we must do, unless the situation changes some time. I am sorry to have to say it as you may feel disappointed and that I have let you down, as a matter of fact I feel that myself, am afraid I may have treated you rather badly letting you take things for granted when I ought not to have done so, although that was not my intention, and am very sorry if it is so. I feel you are not to blame in any way but I am, I know, and the only thing we can do is sort of forget the whole thing and hope you can forgive me for letting you down.

"Sincerely,
"J."

"P.S. I feel we ought not to get in touch again about this for a while as there is nothing we can do. Please read between the lines and don't be angry."

Since the defendant appears to find this letter amusing, I can only say that her sense of humor has not much in common with mine.

MR. WARNER: Is the defendant on trial for changes in facial expression? I did not know that an unhappy smile was an indictable offense.

JUDGE MANN: The comments of both counsel are out of order. Continue, please.

MR. HUNTER: As you have already heard, members of the jury, the last letter we have here was not mailed, but found in Miss Blake's possession. During her interrogation by Mr. Lamson, she stated certain reasons for not mailing it—part of the testimony which you have heard, to which you will give whatever weight you believe it deserves. This last letter is dated August 8th, 1959, more than a month after Miss Blake received that letter from James Doherty. I would remind you too that August 8th was the day after the picnic which has been mentioned several times in the testimony. The letter reads:

"Dear Jimmy:

"Understand, before you start reading this, that you need not answer it unless you wish. I will wait a while, and then take silence for your answer if that is how it must be. I had almost accepted silence already, or thought I had, most of the time this last month. But I saw you yesterday—might have stayed away, meant to, could not—with all the fog of company manners between us, and discovered what I should have known: I am not cured of you. I wish I were, and I shall be after a while. I've wished I could hate or despise you—can't do that, but I'll be able to forget you sometime, and if there's no happiness at least there will be peace, of one sort or another.

"I have gone by two periods, Jimmy. In those good days of June—yes, they were good—we evidently managed to start a certain arrogant little Blake-Doherty thing which now lives in me as if he belonged there. And he does. What does this knowledge do to you? Sorry? Scared? Maybe a little bit happy, or proud? Or just angry with me? I'm shocked to realize I don't know you well enough to guess the answer.

"One thing I will not do—and your religion would approve my decision, I believe (at the same time that it provides some cruel obstacles in the way of carrying it out). I will not, Jimmy—I will not creep off on the wrong side of our idiot laws and have an abortion. I want this child. Crazy of me it may be, but I already love it, while it's just a blob of almost-nothing that'll soon be making me sick and physically scared. I want it.

"And I want the child to have a father. From the start. I've seen too much of petticoat government—it reeks. I don't trust my own self to bring up a child alone. In spite of all the best knowledge I have, sooner or later I'd have some damned uprush of maternity to the brain and start making a lot of the mistakes all mothers make—including some my own mother made with me, no doubt—and nobody to check me, nobody to fill the father's place that must not be empty if a child is to grow up straight and good. I won't have my baby crippled that way.

"He's yours too, Jimmy. It's your seed in me, the life-package from all your grandfathers and grandmothers. He's from Ireland, dear, he's from Italy where my father's mother was born, he's from one of the embraces when your sweet strong body could not free itself until I was willing to let you go. I frightened you sometimes, didn't I? I will again, or at least I dream of it.

"All right, let's be sober. For religious reasons, Ann will never even consider a divorce. There is such a thing as separation, that would allow you to provide for her but live with me. The legal formula is not too important to me—I wish we might have it, but it would not hurt me to live without it, and we could educate the child so that his understanding would be too big to care for such cretinous words as 'illegitimate.' With your training you could find work anywhere in the States—or abroad for that matter, Canada, England, Australia. So could I. I understand the kind of art work that makes money, as well as photography. I also know shorthand and typing. We'd make out wherever we went, and be the same as married. It only needs your will for it, Jimmy, and an amount of courage that isn't abnormal. Others faced with the same difficulty have done it.

"Granted, Ann would be hurt badly, for a while. She'd consider us both lost in sin. (Do you?) Her pride would be hurt, and her love for you, which may be strong—I don't know that, yes or no. Jimmy, you and Ann don't have children. You and I do have a child. Granted also that Ann is good and sweet and conventionally right. Does that give her the right—

Members of the jury, three words are crossed out here, but not illegible. It is my understanding that these letters will be available for the inspection of the jury; the purpose of reading them is to save time and to make sure of the correct interpretation, as Mr. Warner pointed out. Now I think I should read these crossed-out words, but will not do so if the defense has any objection. Do you wish to look at the page again, Mr. Warner?

MR. WARNER: Not necessary, but wait a moment, please. [Conferring with defendant.] The crossed-out words may be read, so long as the jury is given the whole picture. The words are still legible, it's true, but not clearly, and it was evidently not Miss Blake's intention that they should be legible, if she had ever mailed the letter.

MR. HUNTER: Thank you, Counselor. The words crossed out are "to destroy us"—"Does that give her the right to destroy us"—but with those words crossed out, the letter reads thus:

"Does that give her the right to keep you and me apart and prevent my child from having a father?

"Living seems to be full of situations where you can't do a good thing without an accompanying evil. I suppose it's questions of this kind that make people give up trying to solve their own ethical problems and ask some supernatural authority to do it for them. And yet I would think that the only answer in any such dilemma is to decide which is greater, the evil or the good. If they seem to balance, doubtless inaction is better than trying to perform your good act. But if one is clearly greater than the other, isn't the answer plain? I know this goes contrary to your religious views, but Jimmy, this once, think whether I may not be right and yourself mistaken.

"I am trying to think straight, about the years ahead, the child, about living with you, the difficulties we'd face. I'm trying not to remember that you did look at me yesterday once or twice as a lover might, and with the sunlight falling across your cheekbones, before I quit playing with the Wayne kids and wandered off. Maybe some time I'll tell you where I went and what I did.

"I can't think of Ann as anything but an innocent bystander. She needs you in the common ways, but I—"

Members of the jury, the letter ends there. The State rests.

JUDGE MANN: The Court will hear any motions.

MR. WARNER: Your Honor, I move that the case of the People against Callista Blake be dismissed on the following grounds: one, that the prosecution has not demonstrated that the death of Ann Doherty resulted from a criminal action; two, that the prosecution has not, by witnesses, connected the defendant Callista Blake with the death of Ann Doherty beyond a reasonable doubt.

JUDGE MANN: The motion is denied, Mr. Warner. Are there other motions?

MR. WARNER: No, your Honor, not at this time.

JUDGE MANN: The Court stands adjourned until 1 P.M.

7

Upon this, by us has she been required to voluntarily declare herself to be, and to have always been, a demon of the nature of a Succubus, which is a female devil whose business it is to corrupt Christians by the blandishments and flagitious delights of love. To this the speaker has replied that the affirmation would be an abominable falsehood, seeing that she had always felt herself to be a most natural woman.

Then her irons being struck off by the torturer, the aforesaid has removed her dress, and has maliciously and with evil design bewildered and attacked our understanding with the sight of her body, the which, for a fact, exercises upon a man supernatural coercion.

BALZAC, The Succubus

I

In the robing room after the noon recess, Judge Mann was assailed by a feeling of being out of place, ludicrously so, dismayingly. The village atheist blundering into a crowd of churchgoers to retrieve his hat; or an explorer required to take part in a tribal ritual without a briefing on the rules. Innocent oversight, by the way, on the part of local chieftains and witchdoctors, for why wouldn't they assume that everybody knew the rules from infancy as they did? What am I doing here?

He could ask the question of Joe Bass and receive an intelligent answer. No good. No use making Joe uneasy about the Judge's state of mind.

Even the door to the courtroom looked unfamiliar. Why had he never before noticed that the swirling grain of the oak resembled the smoke lines of a bonfire? He stood with his hand on the knob, reflecting also that technique is not enough: he should spend several months, say a year, in a special kind of discipline, before it would be right to start taking piano pupils—supposing he had any such intention. He turned the knob, hearing the muted uproar of a hundred conversations in the dull room beyond; opened the door a crack, and the noise became a sonorous flow; opened it then all the way, and the roar was shut off by the action, since every talker had been watching that door, impatient for the continuation of ritual. For example, I would have to learn much more about children—

"All rise!"

He walked to the Judge's bench a stranger. Why the devil must they stand up? Settling their damn lunches?

Seated, noticing how quickly today the rustle and throat-clearing subsided, his eyes were annoyed by shabbiness. Old stains, scratches on the woodwork, in every corner a pinch of dust; on every face—Callista Blake's, Hunter's, even Mr. Delehanty's—the marks of that peculiarly human strain that people experience in the presence of the heavy institutions they themselves have made. Maybe his eyes were exaggerating the dust, to support the bias of his mind, which insisted on pointing up the dirt, cracks, awkwardly mended spots and general bad housekeeping of the law itself. Well, there are certain things to do before I go. "Are you ready for your opening, Mr. Warner?"

"Yes, your Honor." The Old Man could hardly say that no one is ever ready to send his love into the bonfire. "Members of the jury, I don't think you want to hear any elaborate opening speech from me. A great part of the defense of Callista Blake has already been brought out by testimony for the prosecution. I am not referring only to the transcript of the interrogation of Miss Blake by District Attorney Lamson, in the course of which she told practically everything that she can tell if I put her on the witness stand. I am thinking, for example, of the testimony of a very honest and impartial State policeman, concerning footprints and other evidence by that pond in Shanesville. I'll revert to his testimony in my closing words. I'm thinking of the testimony of Mrs. Jason." Anyway, Mann thought, Cecil Warner's voice was in good shape; he was slow, and calm, and steady on his feet. "And I am thinking, of course, of those letters written by Callista Blake which the District Attorney by some process of reasoning utterly beyond me—I suppose it's reasoning—appears to regard as evidence of guilt.

"We're confronted here, ladies and gentlemen, by a case in which the most vital elements are intangible, subjective. Now, the law doesn't like intangibles. That's natural. If we're dealing with clear, everyday facts of observation we know where we are, we're used to thinking in those terms, we can manage as well as if we were manipulating a solid object in the hand. Take a common sort of case for an example: a man falls in getting off a bus, is injured, and sues the traction company. All right: you've got eyewitnesses, medical testimony, and a few fairly simple questions to decide: did he fall? was he injured, and if so how badly? was the bus company at fault, and if so what's a just compensation for the injuries? A jury will have minor difficulties in a case like that: there's the possibility that the man's a clever fraud, and since most people are not good observers, the eyewitnesses may contradict each other a little, but on the whole juries don't have too hard a time in reaching a fair verdict in such cases.

"Here it's not so. In this case the tangible facts are hardly in dispute, the vital problem is the interpretation of those facts. There was aconitine in Callista Blake's apartment; the defense has not denied it. I know, and Callista Blake knows, why it was there; the State will try to tell you it was there because of a deep-laid premeditated plot to kill Ann Doherty. Ann Doherty did drink the poison there, undoubtedly; we know it happened accidentally, the State will say she was intended to drink it. The State has demonstrated an affair between Callista Blake and James Doherty; we have not denied it nor thought of denying it. And the State, by inference, supplies Callista Blake with the motive of common jealousy and argues that this led to premeditated murder. Now Callista herself knows that isn't so; I know it, and so do a few others really well acquainted with her: they're aware that no degree of sexual jealousy would ever drive her to perform such an act. But how in the world is she to prove it to twelve honest jurors who never saw her before the trial? It's just not in the field of tangible proof. I could put her on the stand, and if she talked to you all day long, what could she say on that subject that isn't already said in the traditional words she's already spoken when she was indicted?—'I am not guilty.' Finally, the defense does not deny that Callista Blake drove out to Shanesville soon after Ann Doherty left. The State will have it that she went out there in a sort of pursuit of Ann Doherty, to make sure Ann died. We know she did it because she had just discovered that Ann might have got some of that stuff; we know she went out there in an attempt to reach Ann before it was too late and save her life; and it was too late, and Ann Doherty was dead. So there you have state and prosecution asserting precise contraries. We cannot, by tangible evidence, prove the intentions, motives, ideas of Callista Blake; neither can the State. In this connection I'll merely remind you for the present that the State's own witness Sergeant Shields very clearly and carefully said there was no way of telling how Ann's body got into the pond; he made it clear there isn't a scrap of that precious tangible evidence to show that Callista Blake did anything except stand there and look down, as she told Mr. Lamson she did.

"Because of the nature of the case, the primary questions of reasonable doubt and criminal intent or absence of it, I am intending to call only two witnesses for the defense. As a prosecutor, and taking it for granted that he has somehow honestly convinced himself of Callista Blake's guilt, it was unavoidable that my able adversary should have piled up all that mass of circumstantial evidence, even though hardly any of it was in dispute. As a prosecutor, he had to do it; trying to your patience as well as mine, but that's how the law works. Yet when the dust of argument has settled and you've gone into that jury room, I think you'll see—or more likely you do already—how the whole thing comes down to the question whether or not you believe Callista's word. The two witnesses I mean to call are the two who can come nearer than any others to telling you, showing you, convincing you, what kind of girl, what kind of human being Callista Blake really is. And I have no more to say by way of argument until after they have been heard. Miss Edith Nolan, please!"

She came forward not briskly but with poise, her thin face showing the gravity of concentration. She wore the same green tweed suit, in some need of pressing, that she had worn all through the trial. The dark shade, nearly the green of hemlock, set off her red hair pleasantly, the Judge thought, but did not belong too well with light blue eyes; and to wear the same costume four days running was maybe a little odd. He noticed also, and hoped the jury would not, her moment's hesitation as Mr. Delehanty recited the oath and held out the Bible for her. Probably she would prefer to affirm but had decided against such action to avoid offending the jury, accepting what to her might be a distasteful absurdity for the sake of her friend. Edith Nolan would not be, like Mrs. Jason, a truth-teller at any cost, though the Judge supposed that whatever she said would be in the service of truth as she saw it.

And what would Callista Blake do if and when it was time for her to take the oath? If Callista had learned anything yet about the grown-up necessities of compromise, it did not appear in the evidence nor in her own actions thus far. The girl who made the responses in the Lamson interrogation seemed too young, too sharply earnest to understand flexibility or the art of yielding minor issues for the sake of great ones. He thought: Let her learn it quickly! And instructed himself irritably to quit borrowing trouble ahead of time.

Miss Nolan also took care to make no open demonstration of the friendship which the Judge knew existed between herself and Cecil Warner. One swift eloquent glance he saw, a silent declaration: "I'm with you and will do whatever I can." Then she was in the witness chair, private tensions skillfully hidden, giving routine information: age thirty-one, unmarried, portrait and free-lance photographer, A.B. Radcliffe plus a year of art school, studio and residence at 96 Hallam Street, Winchester.

"Is that address near to 21 Covent Street, Miss Nolan?"

"Yes, four of those long uptown blocks."

"How long have you known the defendant Callista Blake?"

"It's almost a year and a half now. She's been my assistant at the studio since July of last year. She answered an advertisement of mine, I employed her, and we very soon became close friends."

"Did she take her apartment at Covent Street soon after she began to work for you?"

"I think it was the same week. I helped her look for it."

"The close friendship you speak of—tell us more of that, will you? For instance, you're familiar with the details of Callista's life—past history, opinions, tastes, temperament, things of that sort?"

"Yes, Mr. Warner. A year and a half isn't a long time, but I think I know Callista as well as I could know my own younger sister if I had one, or better. Interests in common, a natural sympathy I suppose it might be called. We agree on many things, and when we differ we know how to talk, get our ideas across to each other."

"Your shared interest in artistic work has been a large part of that bond of friendship, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it has."

"Do you at present do any artistic work yourself, besides photography?"

"Not just at present. I have in the past. Illustrations for a children's book a couple of years ago. Nothing grand, but I hear the kids liked them. A few things like that."

"In any case you do have professional training and professional standing. I'm going to ask you for what the law calls an expert opinion. Miss Nolan, if you were not personally acquainted with Callista Blake, and if you were called on to judge her work, say in an exhibition of good serious modern painters, how would you rate it?"

Judge Mann saw T. J. Hunter consider an objection and settle for a somewhat elaborate bored look. The red-haired woman smiled, for the first time. Mann's pencil on the doodle-pad rather angrily crossed out its attempt to draw her face, not in cartoon but in a portrait sketch. It had escaped him altogether. I haven't got it. He laid the pencil down.

"May it please the Court, is Mr. Warner introducing some of the defendant's art work as an exhibit for the defense, or is this just a love feast?"

"Mr. Hunter, I think your sarcasm may be distasteful to the jury as well as to the Court." But it isn't, and Terence, for Christ's sake hold your water! That was too strong. "May I see the sketch, Miss Nolan?"

Warner handed it up. Turned away from the jury, his round sagging face showed nothing of triumph, looked only tired and frightened. Another face confronted the Judge, with the arrogance and pathos and curious vulnerable mirth of childhood. Doris would be about ten, said Callista's affectionate unsentimental lines, and she was amused about something: perky, uncertain, lovable, maybe a bit dangerous. He thought: Now I know. And though I know it, she still could die. Judge Cleever—"I don't suppose it would qualify as an exhibit, Mr. Warner, since it isn't directly relevant to any of the legal issues. However, if you wish the jury to see it, the Court has no objection."

Hunter said quietly: "But I object. I haven't seen it, but I consider the introduction of it an unwarranted attempt to influence the jury's sympathies with irrelevant matters, and by an improper method."

"I will overrule your objection, Mr. Hunter. The defense is privileged to question Miss Nolan as a character witness. Miss Blake's artistic ability is an aspect of her character that it would be absurd to ignore. No objection was made by you when Mr. Warner asked Miss Nolan for an expert opinion in the field of art, in which she's evidently qualified to speak. The introduction of this sketch is merely a natural means of supplementing and demonstrating what Miss Nolan has to say."

Reluctantly, for it was loss of contact with something valued and not yet understood, he watched the drawing pass into the lumpy hands of Peter Anson, foreman, hands that held it briefly under bothered eyes and passed it on. Casually, and perhaps to cover the intentness with which he was watching the jury, Cecil Warner said: "Being older, more experienced, art school and all that, you've taught Callista to some extent, haven't you?"

The drawing escaped from the blank glance of Emma Beales into the hands of LaSalle, which held it for some time, and gently. Edith Nolan said slowly: "About technique, handling materials, things like that, yes, Mr. Warner, but ..." The drawing rested in Mrs. Kleinman's lap while she changed to reading glasses; probably the good lady couldn't get used to bifocals. "Her ability is very much greater than anything I have, so it would be truer to say, Mr. Warner, that she has taught me." Mr. Fielding looked at the face of Doris Wayne with lifted brows that might mean indifference or annoyance, and passed the drawing to Helen Butler. "You see, aside from her own talent, Callista has that faculty of searching out whatever's best in anyone, and—" Why must Helen Butler look at me? I am not Callista's accuser!—"and making it better if she can."

Don't get too rich for their blood, Miss Nolan! Hide a little the fact that you love her, or they'll begin to discount what you say. And yet, the Judge reflected, she could hardly be expected to dissemble; there would be a false note if she did. And how softly the woman was speaking!—as if they were here not to consider Callista Blake's life or death but only to talk about her as friends might talk affectionately of another in absence. He looked again at the jury. Miss Butler had relinquished the drawing to a hand from the back row and was frowning into the distance, her mild intelligent face more disturbed than he had seen it at any time during the trial. A Sunday painter, wasn't she?—he tried to remember her answers during voir dire examination, but they had gone vague: a rather mousy personality, good and pleasant but not strong.

The foreman Peter Anson fidgeted irritably, and settled into a glumness. Something wrong there. Judge Mann felt a kind of pain, in its beginning hardly distinguishable from a twisted muscle or the first warning of nausea. Anson's blunt face had become readable; at any rate Judge Mann's interpretation of its look came to him with such force that it was difficult for him to doubt his own insight: the blobby features were saying that to Mr. Peter Anson long-hairs and especially long-hair intellectual women were one big pain in the ass. You could understand it. Anson was a man who liked things simple and comfortable; he wanted larger issues settled by authority and formula, and you could say the wish derived from an honest humility, inarticulate awareness of his own mental limitations; unfortunately it meant that anything not covered by authority and formula must be brushed aside, or ignored—or hated. Confronted by a manifestly human Callista Blake or Edith Nolan—well, Anson was a good little joe and would try to be fair about it; BUT ... Only later did the Judge admit that his sense of unease, so much resembling obscure physical pain, could be the beginning of despair.

The drawing came back to Warner from the hands of Peter Anson but without another glance from him; for a moment his stubby hands were eloquent, saying: "This paper has nothing to do with me."