The reporter, looking startlingly pale under the glaring lights, remarked casually, “I don’t believe that I’ll marry you after all.”
The red-headed girl could feel herself go first very white and then very red and then very white again. She could hear her heart pounding just behind her ears. In a voice even more casual than the reporter’s she inquired, “After all what?”
“After all your nonsense,” said the reporter severely.
The red-headed girl said in a voice so small and abject that it was practically inaudible, “Please do!”
“What are we doing in here?” inquired the reporter in a loud clear voice. “What are we doing in a courtroom at a murder trial, with two hundred and fifty-four people watching us? Where’s a beach? Where’s an apple orchard? Where’s a moonlit garden with a nightingale? You get up and put your things on and come out of this place.”
The red-headed girl rose docilely to her feet. After all, what were they doing there? What was a murder trial or verdict or a newspaper story compared to—— She halted, riveted with amazement.
Suddenly, mysteriously, incredibly, the courtroom was all in motion. No one had crossed a threshold, no one had raised a voice; but as surely as though they had been tossed out of their seats by some gigantic hand, the crowd was in flight. One stampede toward the door from the occupants of the seats, another stampede from the occupants of the seats toward the door, a hundred voices calling, regardless of law and order.
“Keep that ’phone line open!”
“They’re coming!”
“Dorothy! Dorothy!”