“By stories too evil to repeat, she says, she was turned against Thaw. And then, when he returned, she tells him of what she had heard about him, and he says, ‘Poor little Evelyn. Somebody has deceived you.’
“And when I call her renunciation of this young man sublime I did not do so with a sneer. Such a renunciation, if it really occurred, is unparalleled in history.
“Great actress, indeed! She thought she could play on you like so many children. Look at those pictures taken when she was sixteen years old—does she look anything like the way she appeared in court?
“She appears in these early photographs in a way which you could not allow a daughter of yours of sixteen to appear.
“She comes here in her little school-girl dress—her little white, turned-down collars, which cover all but the flowing ends of a pretty childlike bow-tie. She sits in the witness chair and tries to impress on you this assumed, youthful childishness.
“There she was a poor, wronged, orphan child, whom Thaw would take to his arms and protect. Sir Galahad took that angel child—took her from her mother and flaunted her through every capital of Europe. ‘Dementia Americana’—the higher, unwritten law! Why, you may paint Stanford White in as black color as you wish, but there are no colors in the artists’ box black enough to paint this Sir Galahad. Why should this Sir Galahad be abandoned by this girl? Why should she leave him? For some reason she did leave him. Why? Let us go into the Hummel affidavit.
“What do we find Thaw doing? We find him wrapping $50 around American Beauty roses and sending them to her. Is that the course of honorable courtship?
“‘Rector’s, I know, is not the proper place for an innocent young person, but I always had a weakness for it.’ (Mr. Jerome read from the diary.)
“‘It is my ambition to see things and then settle down; but I want to be a good actress before I settle down to a humdrum existence.’”
Jerome again read from the diary of the girl, Evelyn Nesbit.