So far as the Judge could see, Edith Nolan was doing nothing to flaunt her personal attractiveness. Probably to many eyes she would have none. Her make-up was not prominent, the tweed suit practically dowdy, her manner consistently simple and direct. If his wandering middle-aged eye wanted a tickling, why not choose an obvious pin-up type like the juror Dolores Acevedo? He forced himself to glance in that direction once again. The black-haired beauty was showing no more emotion at present than Mr. Fielding. Very lovely indeed; made more so by her position next to the sallow weediness of the schoolteacher Stella Wainwright. Lovely like a conventional painting, Acevedo—and no more disturbing. Her face blurred; the instant's involuntary motion of his eyes transformed it to another, also under black hair: but these were close-set curls, the face altogether different, not beautiful at all by common standards but rather homely, big-nosed, small-chinned, the eyes sea-blue and, not for the first time, frightening. "It wasn't natural how men went crazy for her—not even pretty—any man, garage man, anything in pants...."
That peevish outbreak from Maud Welsh had puzzled the Judge at the time. Now he could sense the quality in Callista that Maud Welsh had meant. Earlier perhaps he had been too intensely preoccupied with other aspects of the case and with his own situation as Judge, the lawyer and judge dominant, the male animal quiescent or at least temporarily locked up in the cellar. Yes, she had it, the quality sensed but not understood because understanding is a verbalizing process and there aren't any words for the electric something-or-other that will make men turn in desire toward one particular woman in a crowd, ignoring others who may be in a dozen ways prettier, more agreeable, more available. Callista had it. Edith Nolan, in her own totally different way, had it, at least for himself, perhaps not for most others. No: Maud Welsh wouldn't have been likely to make that remark about Miss Nolan. Yes, they are wandering.
"Do you recall, Miss Nolan, what day it was that this conversation took place, about Doherty's letter?"
"Yes, it was the evening of Monday, July 6th, the same day Callista had received that letter."
"I'll ask you to tell the circumstances more fully in your own way."
"She telephoned me, that evening, soon after going home from my studio. Asked me to come over to Covent Street. Her voice sounded as it might if she'd been in physical pain. I went at once, and found her—well, dazed, sick, in shock you could call it. She'd been in one of her blue moods all week, I didn't know why. She held out that letter to me. I read the thing. I remember I told her she'd feel better if she could cry, or smash dishes, anything to break the tension that was making her sick. She did cry, the only time I've known her to do so. And told me about it. Everything, I think. Except at that time she didn't know she was pregnant—a few days past the period, not enough to signify. When she was able to talk she was much better, got things in proportion, summed it up quite realistically herself without my saying much. She'd loved him a while, the kind of infatuation any lonely and imaginative girl might experience; then when she most needed him he'd broken it off, and that was that."
"Objection! Irrelevant opinions."
"Objection overruled." Judge Mann reflected dourly on the legal unwisdom of what he was about to add, and added it: "It appears to the Court that the witness is concerned with matters of fact as she saw them, speaking to the best of her knowledge and belief." Old buzzard, pint-size Emerson Lake in a black silk nightie, you wanted that startled blue-eyed glance, the warmth of it and the friendliness, and you knew you'd get it: consider whether that was why you spoke.
"Exception."