. He was not sorry for that. It was a
horrible case, full of abominable allegations and suggestions such as
he would have hated to discuss with Rosamund. As he stood in the little
hall of their house, which was delicately scented with lavender and lit
by pale sunshine, bidding her good-by, he realized the impossibility of
such a woman as she was ever being "mixed up" in such a trial. Simply
that couldn't happen, he thought. Instinct would keep her far from every
suggestion of a possible impurity. He felt certain that Mrs. Clarke
was innocent, but, as he looked into Rosamund's honest brown eyes,
he thought that Mrs. Clarke must have been singularly imprudent. He
remembered how she had held his hand in Mrs. Chetwinde's drawing-room.
Wisdom and unwisdom; he compared them: the one was a builder up, the
other a destroyer of beauty--the beauty that is in every completely sane
and perfectly poised life.

"Rose," he said, leaning forward to kiss his wife, "I think you are very
wise."

"Why wise all of a sudden?" she asked, smiling.

"You keep the door of your life."

He glanced round at the little hall, simple, fresh, with a few white
roses in a blue pot, the pale sunshine lying on the polished floor of
wood, the small breeze coming in almost affectionately between snowy
curtains. Purity--everything seemed to whisper of that, to imply that;
simplicity ruling, complexity ruled out.

And then he was sitting in the crowded court, breathing bad air, hearing
foul suggestions, watching strained or hateful faces, surrounded by
people who were attracted by ugly things as vultures are attracted by
the stench of dead and decaying bodies. At first he loathed being there;
presently, however, he became interested, then almost fascinated by his
surroundings and by the drama which was being played slowly out in the
midst of them.

Daventry, in wig and gown, looked tremendously legal and almost severe
in his tense gravity. Sir John Addington, his leader, a man of great
fame, was less tense in his watchfulness, amazingly at his ease with the
Court, and on smiling terms with the President, who, full of worldly
and unworldly knowledge, held the balance of justice with an unwavering
firmness. The jury looked startlingly commonplace, smug and sleepy,
despite the variety of type almost inevitably presented by twelve human
beings. Not one of them looked a rascal; not one of them looked an
actively good man. The intense Englishness of them hit