y away. She must be
there for the final word, for the last sight of Joe's prison-white
face.

She must whip herself to sit there as boldly as innocence and cheat the
public into accepting the blanched cheek of fear for the wearing strain
of sorrow; she must sit there until the end. Then she could rise up and
go her way, no matter how it turned out for Joe. She could leave there
with her guilty secret in her heart and the shame of her cowardice
burning like a smothered coal in her breast.

It would hurt to know that Joe had gone to prison for her sake, even
though he once had stepped into the doorway of her freedom and cut off
her light. The knowledge that Alice Price loved him, and that Joe loved
her, for she had read the secret in their burning eyes, would make it
doubly hard. She would be cheating him of liberty and robbing him of
love. Still, they would be no more than even, at that, said she, with a
recurring sweep of bitterness. Had Joe not denied them both to her? All
of this she turned in her mind as she sat waiting for court to open that
somber morning.

The rain in yesterday's threat had come; it was streaking the windows
gray, and the sound of the wind was in the trees, waving their bare
limbs as in fantastic grief against the dull clouds. There was no
comfort in youth and health and prettiness of face and form; no pride in
possession of lands and money, when a hot and tortuous thing like
conscience was lying so ill-concealed behind the thin wall of her
breast.

She thought bitterly of Curtis Morgan, who had failed her so completely.
Never again in the march of her years would she need the support of his
hand and comforting affection as she needed it then. But he had gone
away and forgotten, like a careless hunter who leaves his uncovered fire
after him to spring in the wind and go raging with destructive curse
through the forest. He had struck the spark to warm himself a night in
its pleasurable glow; the hands of ten thousand men could not quench its
flame today.

Judge Maxwell had been conferring with the lawyers in the case these few
minutes, setting a limit to their periods of oration before the jury, to
which both sides agreed after the usual protestations. The court-room
was very quiet; expectancy sat upon the faces of all who waited when Sam
Lucas, prosecuting attorney, rose and began his address to the jury.

He began by calling attention to what he termed the "peculiar atrocity
of this crime,