"He's 'Doherty' to you now? Not 'Jimmy' any more, just 'Doherty'?"
She turned her face to the Judge with a look of blindness. "Must I answer that?"
"You need not," said Judge Mann. "I think you might withdraw the question, Mr. Hunter."
But even at that moment—the Judge manifestly friendly, Hunter showing up badly as his antagonism became too obviously personal and overdramatized—even at that more or less favorable moment Warner felt a change in Callista, a retreat or a weakening, as though before his eyes she had slipped further away from him, almost out of sight and hearing. He might, he supposed, be exaggerating her look of increased exhaustion, a fault in his own powers of observation. The pain slid down his arm again, compelling some part of his mind to mumble: Heart?—and irrelevant? Callista was not necessarily in flight, not necessarily losing her desire to live. A better part of his mind recalled a better voice, speaking with a nearly incomprehensible sweetness: "Living is journeying, and love's a region we can enter for a while."
"I withdraw my question. Miss Blake, as the author of these letters, I take it you are the one person best qualified to explain this sentence: 'You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you free.'"
"Oh—oh—explain it by what follows, can't you? I think when I wrote that I wasn't referring to Ann."
"Well, not exactly, Miss Blake. The words I see on this page are: 'No, I don't hate Ann, I was not thinking only of Ann when I wrote that.' Only, Miss Blake—that seems to say pretty plainly that you're at least including Ann Doherty in what you wrote about your Jimmy being a prisoner. Doesn't it?"
"All right—if you wish."
"It's no question of what I wish, Miss Blake."