into the
white hand of the woman who must die for a fiendish crime. A latter-day
seer tells us, that in all realms, "Between laws there is no analogy,
there is Continuity"; then in the universe of ethical sociology, who
shall trace the illimitable ramifications of the Law of Compensation?

Up and down, back and forth, slowly, wearily walked the prisoner; and
when the town clock struck eight, she mechanically counted each stroke.
As in drowning men, the landmarks of a lifetime rise, huddle, almost
press upon the glazing eyes, so the phantasmagoria of Beryl's past,
seemed projected in strange luminousness upon the pall of the present,
like profiles in silvery flame cast on a black curtain.

Holding her father's hand, she walked in the Odenwald; sitting beside
her mother on a carpet of purple vetches, she stemmed strawberries in a
garden near Pistoja; clinging to Bertie's jacket, she followed him
across dimpling sands to dip her feet in the blue Mediterranean waves,
that broke in laughter, showing teeth of foam, where dying sunsets
reddened all the beach. Through sunny arcades, flushed with
pomegranate, glowing with orange, silvered with lemon blossoms, came
the tinkling music of contadini bells, the bleating of kids, the
twittering of happy birds, the distant chime of an Angelus; all the
subtle harmony, the fragmentary melody that flickers through an
Impromptu of Chopin or Schubert. She saw the simulacrum of her former
self, the proud, happy Beryl of old, singing from the score of the
"Messiah", in the organ loft of a marble church; she heard the rich
tenor voice of her handsome brother, as he trilled a barcarole one
night, crossing the Atlantic; she smelled the tuberoses at Mentone, the
faint breath of lilies her father had loved so well, and then, blotting
all else, there rose clear as some line of Morghen's, that attic room;
the invalid's bed, the low chair beside it, the wasted figure, the
suffering, fever-flushed face of the beloved mother, as she saw her
last, with the Grand Duke jasmine fastened at her throat.

The door was thrown open, and the officer beckoned her to follow him.
Back into the crowded court-room, where people pressed even into the
window sills for standing room, where Judge and counsel sat gravely
expectant; where the stillness of death had suddenly fallen. The
officer conducted her to the bar, then drew back, and Mr. Dunbar came
and stood at her side; resting his hand on the back of her chair.