CHAPTER XII.
'BRAVE SPIRITS ARE A BALSAM TO THEMSELVES.'
Maurice Clissold also looked at the girl as she stood up at the end of the table in the little bit of clear space left for the witnesses. A shaft of sunshine slanted from the skylight. The room was built out from the house, and lighted from the top, an apartment usually devoted to Masonic meetings and public dinners. In that clear radiance the girl's face was wondrously spiritualized. Easy to fancy that some being not quite of this common earth stood there, and that from those pale lips the awful truth would speak as if by the voice of revelation.
So Maurice Clissold thought as he looked at her. Never till this moment had she appeared to him beautiful; and now it was no common beauty which he beheld in her, but a strange and spiritual charm impossible of definition.
'You were the last person who saw Mr. Penwyn alive, except his murderer?' said Mr. Pergament, interrogatively, after the usual formula had been gone through.
'I opened the shop door for him when he went out, after supper.'
'At what o'clock?'
'Half-past two.'
'Was he perfectly sober at that time?'