triangle of handkerchief shone, still perfect, spotless at the weary end of the day. And the jury was standing. Graceless in the group and clumsy, they mutely apologized to each other for their elbows, raised their hands for the burbling of Mr. Delehanty of the perfect handkerchief. They swore. Too much finality. A true verdict render?--but what is truth? No, too much. Behind the half-comic front, too vast a thing for the Hoags, Lagovskis, Kleinmans.

But, Edith thought, that's how it's done. And we persuade ourselves that what we wish to call truth may emerge from it. We accept the ludicrous fancy that you multiply wisdom when you multiply one by twelve.

Mr. Delehanty laid down the Bible. Flushed, important, the jury took their seats. The prosecutor stood. Edith's stomach twisted. She bent forward, covering her face. Too much.

She thought: But I know Callista! Frail, damaged, miraculous body; wild, difficult, exasperating, wholly irreplaceable brain that understood, needed, desired so much--everything that was Callista could be and might be charred to rubbish, to satisfy the mythology of a still vengeful and superstitious race. Surely not even guilty; but if she were--Edith knew then that the same emotional storm would have struck her if she had believed Callista Blake guilty of this and a thousand other crimes. A storm including personal shame and horror at taking part, if only by silent presence, in an act of barbarism. What are we doing here?

Cecil Warner turned toward the cold gleam of the courtroom window; an eastern window, the winter sunshine long gone. In the morning he had watched a glint of the sun on Callista's black hair, and on the polished bleakness of the table where her arm rested. The daily journey and decline of the sun affected him more deeply now than in past years, left him irrationally disappointed on the gray days, less willing to accept the approach and arrival of night. On such days, or at the tired conclusions of winter afternoons, the age of his body oppressed him--as now, when he turned his heavy head and felt a wobbling sag of cheeks, unwilling droop of eyelids, slight but irritating deafness, uncertainty of his powers. And in all activities between foggy waking and not quite desired sleep, a fading, a knowledge of relinquishment. If his eyes sought and cherished (as now) the delicate swell of Callista's breast, his mind said: My hand will not follow that curve, not ever. Or it said: Even the inner and almost hidden love that keeps the spirit alive and sometimes strong and sometimes angry--even that is only for a little while.

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