"Something in that. Is Warner with her, do you know?"
"I think so. He wouldn't leave her unless she asked to be alone."
"He surprised me this morning, that closing speech. Two and a half hours. I never thought he'd take all morning, and repeat himself so much. It was—effective, maybe, but it scared me too. I couldn't help thinking it was effective only for people who already know Callista. I tried to think myself into the position of a juryman, a mind totally alien to Callista's. Everything he said was good, but he said too much. Trying to ram it through a stone wall.... I suppose you saw how once or twice he lost the thread of what he was saying and just stood there. Looking lost."
"Yes. He's not just a defense lawyer in this thing. He loves her."
"I've felt that, yes. And so did the jury, I'm afraid—more than he should have let them feel it. It even gave Hunter his cue, I think. After all that thunder and pleading, he could afford to be quiet and cold, and make the mere contrast seem like a virtue. Taking it off now and then to abstract principles the way Warner did—that was good, for us. I can't believe more than two or three of the jury went along with it. 'The defense never rests'—yes, but what can that plumber foreman make out of it? Ah, I don't know...." The intelligent professor faded, leaving a collapsed and tired old man. He shrugged, looked at his watch, gathered his legs under him. "I'm going out for a smoke. Want to?"
"No, I'd better stay, Dr. Chalmers. She'll be coming back when the jury returns, if it does return tonight. She's always looked for me when she first comes in. I've got to be here."
"Yes, I—of course." He blundered away a few steps and turned back to her. "Miss Nolan, I thought you were quite wonderful on the stand—said a number of things I would have liked to say."
Edith winced inwardly, wishing he would go. "In the jury's view I wasn't good. Another maverick."
"Oh, I don't know." He rubbed his sagging face. "Shouldn't underestimate their intelligence, I suppose. It's—democracy in action, you might say—something like that."
"Democracy be God-damned," Edith said. "It's a human life."