"'There's no hurry,' she said to the boots of the hotel, who wrenched the revolver from her hand. 'I sha'n't try to getaway.' And since then she has been silent. Why? Her own words tell us why, gentlemen, and will lift a corner of the curtain which hides the truth from us!
"The policeman who arrested her has told us that he asked the prisoner why she killed Laroque, and that she answered: 'I killed him to prevent him from doing an infamous and shameful thing which would have brought misfortune on some one I love!'
"This, gentlemen," he cried, his voice rising, "tells us the secret of this poor creature!
"She killed this man Laroque, of whose past—as my friend the Public Prosecutor rightly said—no good was known. She killed this man who has, on two occasions, undergone punishment for theft and was capable of anything. She killed him, because taking his life was the only way she could prevent an infamy that would have brought shame land despair on some one she loved!
"Does this not explain the insistency of her silence? This woman, this poor wreck, who has been beaten down to the lowest rungs of the ladder of physical and moral misery, this wretched creature—loves! Good women will sweep their skirts from her touch in the streets, but love is in her heart, and the happiness of him or her whom she loves is dearer to her than her own life!
"One day she sees a menace to this happiness and kills—kills without hesitation the scoundrel who was about to destroy it!"
Gone was the stage fright—gone the fear of failure! As the ear of a musician tells him when his hands have found a chord, so is there a psychic ear which tells the orator that the spirit of his audience is in harmony with his words. As this telepathic message reached his brain, Raymond felt at last within him the power to move the hearts of men. Words poured forth in a rushing flood!
"Love was the motive that made her a criminal! Love, and love only! And whom does she love to the sacrifice of herself? Is it a father who is respected and honored by all in his old age? Is it a husband or lover to whom she has been false and whom she left long ago? Is it a child who knows nothing of his mother's shame and lives unconscious and happy?
"We do not know! But some such love is the secret of my client and the reason of her silence. She cares nothing for what men may say of her, nor for man's judgment of her! She does not care for her own life, and sacrifices it with gladness! But she will not let herself be known! There is only one single being of importance to her, and she will not let her name be spoken lest the sentence stain her picture in the heart of the one she worships!
"Gentlemen of the jury, a woman who can feel like this is no vulgar criminal! I feel sure that I shall prove to you that it is no mere criminal who stands before you! The police have moved heaven and earth to establish her identity, and they have failed. This is alone sufficient proof that this crime is her first; for had she been convicted before, the police would have found traces of her past!