“That must be extremely reassuring for you,” remarked Mr. Farr in a voice so heavily charged with irony that it came close to cracking under the strain. “That will be all, thank you, Mr. Bellamy.”
Mr. Lambert rose slowly to his feet. “The defense rests,” he said.
The red-headed girl watched them filing out through the door at the back without comment, and without comment she accepted the cake of chocolate and the large red apple. She consumed them in the same gloomy silence, broken only by an occasional furtive sniff and the application of a minute and inadequate handkerchief.
“You promised me last night,” said the reporter accusingly, “that if I’d go home you’d stop crying and be reasonable and sensible and——”
“I’m not crying,” said the red-headed girl—“not so that anybody would notice anything at all if they weren’t practically spying on me. It’s simply that I’m a little tired and not exactly cheerful.”
“Oh, it’s simply that, is it? Would you like my handkerchief too?” The red-headed girl accepted it ungratefully.
“The worst thing about a murder trial,” she said, “is that it practically ruins everybody’s life. It’s absolutely horrible. They’re all going along peacefully and quietly, and the first thing they know they’re jerked out of their homes and into the witness box, and things that they thought were safe and hidden and sacred are blazoned out in letters three inches tall in every paper in the . . . That poor little Platz thing, and that wretched Farwell man, and poor little Mrs. Ives with her runaway husband, and Orsini with his jail sentence—it isn’t decent! What have they done?”
The reporter said, “What, indeed?” in the tone of one who has not heard anything but the last three words. After a moment he inquired thoughtfully. “Have you ever thought about getting married?”
The red-headed girl felt her heart miss two beats and then race away like a wild thing. She said candidly, “Oh, often—practically all the time. All nice girls do.”