Was there, for example, no way at all to explain that Callista had a comic brown mole near her navel, that when she was absorbed in reading her left forefinger twisted a black curl above her ear, always the same curl, the same small motion—and that these facts, alone and of themselves, were reasons as great, valid, finally convincing, as any of the other reasons why she must not be slain?
Still it was not, ultimately, a question of explaining anything, of offering facts to twelve other minds with the assumption that they could view them as you did. They could not. If it isn't in nature for two pairs of eyes ever to observe a simple physical object in quite the same manner, how grotesque to expect twelve minds to agree, or even approximate agreement, in the consideration of an abstract idea! What was needed, she thought, was that twelve minds should learn (here and now and very quickly) a type of humility in the face of the unknown that even the strongest and best schooled intelligences found it hard to achieve with study and leisure and every advantage of the past's accumulated resources. Unknown indeed—these people knew nothing of Callista Blake. They never could, in the nature of things, know much, never acquire more than a brief distorted glimpse of her, and that under conditions so outrageously far from the daily norm that her actual self appeared to them as no more than the flicker of a shadow. The kindly and badly troubled little man up there on the bench knew far more about her than they did, simply because he was trained to observation and the disciplines of independent thought; and he knew only a trifle. How little I know myself, or ever will know!
She controlled her face to the semblance of tranquillity. The long-jawed man had arrived with his athletic grace, a foot raised comfortably on the platform that elevated the witness chair, his charcoal-gray suit just right for the occasion, neat and grave like a uniform. At close range, Edith noticed his expression was not particularly cold or severe. His eyes were thoughtful, his features betrayed no ugly tension. What is cruelty anyway, and how do you read it in another? It seemed to be present like an occasional tic (but might not really be) in the vacuous face of that oaf Hoag in the front row of the jury box. But in T. J. Hunter? At the moment he looked like a solemn salesman about to give her a well-spoken pitch, say on insurance or a middle-priced car.
"You would do virtually anything, would you not, for your friend Callista Blake?"
"The best thing I can do for her is tell the truth about her and about these events, so far as I know it, and that I've done."
"Your answer is not quite responsive, Miss Nolan."
"I think it is, but I'll be more specific if you wish. I would not commit crimes for Callista Blake or any other friend, if only because in the long run you do your friend no service that way—compounding wrong things instead of lessening them. And I would not lie for her on any important matter, because it happens the truth is best for her as well as for me."
"That's quite a pragmatic attitude, isn't it?"
My, the high intellectual plane! "Naturalistic might be a better word, Mr. District Attorney, but pragmatic if you like. If an ethical principle isn't at least theoretically practical in human affairs, I'd rather leave it in the books."
"I see your point." If only you did! "You wouldn't kill in defense of Callista Blake?"