"You see, Mary," he said, "a judge can do so little, even in the way of summing up, and he must do justice. A judge sits on the bench as a representative of justice, and all he can do is to analyse the evidence. And you know what the evidence is!"
"But he could not do it," said the girl.
"Think," went on the judge, and he spoke more like a machine than a man. "Think of the terrible train of events: the long years of personal enmity between them; the injuries which the prisoner suffered at the hands of the murdered man; the blow struck on the night of the murder; and then—don't you see, Mary? Besides, there is something else, something which has never come to light, something which must never come to light. Wilson had been, as you know, spoken of as your fiancé, and you know the letter I received from Stepaside. He asked that you might be his wife, and he would be jealous of Wilson. Don't you see? Don't you see? Mind you, this must not come to light. It must not be spoken of at all. Nobody guesses that Stepaside cared anything about you. But what am I saying? Drive it out of your mind, Mary—it's of no consequence at all, and you must not consider it for a moment. Oh, my God, the horror of it! Don't you see, Mary? The horror of it!"
Evidently she did not understand altogether what he was thinking. She did not realise that Paul was her half-brother, and therefore could not altogether understand her father's cry of anguish.
For a moment the two stood together, silent, each looking into the other's face and trying to read each other's thoughts.
"Father," she said at length, "I want to tell you something. I have been to see Paul."
"Been to see Paul! Where? When?"
"I went to see him in prison."
Her father seemed to be staggered by the thought.
"You went to see the prisoner?" he said. Even yet he could not call him by the name that was so dear to him. The legal formulae were almost a habit with him.