(Murmuring and scraps of indistinguishable comment in the crowd, through which only Jean's voice is clear.)
Jean (who has wormed her way to Stonor's side). Why do you dislike her so?
Stonor. I? Why should you think——
Jean (with a vaguely frightened air). I never saw you look as you did—as you do.
Chairman. Order, please—give the lady a fair——
Miss L. (signing to him "It's all right"). Men make boast that an English citizen is tried by his peers. What woman is tried by hers?
(A sombre passion strengthens her voice and hurries her on.)
A woman is arrested by a man, brought before a man judge, tried by a jury of men, condemned by men, taken to prison by a man, and by a man she's hanged! Where in all this were her "peers"? Why did men so long ago insist on trial by "a jury of their peers"? So that justice shouldn't miscarry—wasn't it? A man's peers would best understand his circumstances, his temptation, the degree of his guilt. Yet there's no such unlikeness between different classes of men as exists between man and woman. What man has the knowledge that makes him a fit judge of woman's deeds at that time of anguish—that hour—(lowers her voice and bends over the crowd)—that hour that some woman struggled through to put each man here into the world. I noticed when a previous speaker quoted the Labour Party you applauded. Some of you here—I gather—call yourselves Labour men. Every woman who has borne a child is a Labour woman. No man among you can judge what she goes through in her hour of darkness——
Jean (with frightened eyes on her lover's set, white face, whispers). Geoffrey——
Miss L. (catching her fluttering breath, goes on very low.)—in that great agony when, even under the best conditions that money and devotion can buy, many a woman falls into temporary mania, and not a few go down to death. In the case of this poor little abandoned working girl, what man can be the fit judge of her deeds in that awful moment of half-crazed temptation? Women know of these things as those know burning who have walked through fire.