“You are still of that opinion?”
“I no longer have any opinion.”
“Why should you have changed your opinion that twelve sane men could not possibly believe your story?”
“I do not know whether they will believe me or not,” said Sue Ives, her eyes, fearless and unswerving, on the twelve stolid, inscrutable countenances raised to hers. “You see, I don’t know how true truth sounds.”
“I should imagine not,” said the prosecutor, his voice cruelly smooth. “No further questions.”
And at that Parthian shot the white lips in the white face before him curved suddenly and amazingly into the lovely irony of a smile, a last salute over the drawn swords before they were sheathed.
“That will be all,” said Lambert’s voice gently. “You may stand down.”
For a moment she did not move, but sat staring down with dark eyes to which the smile had not quite reached, at the twelve enigmatic countenances before her—at the slack, careless young one on the far end; the grim elderly one next to it; the small, deep-set eyes above the heavy jowls of that flushed one in the centre; the sleek attentive pallor of the one next to the door. She opened her lips as though to speak again, closed them with a small shake of her head, swept up gloves, bag and fur with one swift gesture, and without a backward glance was gone, moving across the cluttered space between her chair and the box with that light, sure step that seemed always to move across green grass, through sunlight and a little wind. She did not even look at Stephen Bellamy, but in the little space between their chairs their hands met once and clenched in greeting and swung free.
“Your Honour,” said Lambert, in the quiet, tired voice so many leagues removed from the old boom, “in view of Mrs. Ives’s evidence, I would like to have Mr. Bellamy take the stand once more. I have only one or two questions to put to him.”
“He may take the stand,” said Judge Carver impassively.