“My God!” said the Judge. He began to bite his knuckles as if he was tempted sorely enough.
What made me step over to look at the unconscious man’s face? I do not know, unless it was the design of Fate. White it was—white and terrible and stamped with evil and dissipation and fearful dreams. But there was a smile on it as if the blow had been a caress, and that smile was still the smile of a child who sees before it all the endless pleasures of self-indulgence.
I felt the years slide back, I saw the mask of evil and folly torn away. I was sitting again in a beautiful gown in the Trois Folies in Venice, the wind was blowing the flowers on my table, the water in the canal sounded through the lattice, a man was tearing tablecloths from their places, dishes crashed, and then I saw the fellow’s smile fly and his face turn sober, and I heard his voice say, “What are you doing here?” as if he had known me for centuries. Because I knew then, in one look, that John Chalmers and Monty Cranch were one. I had met him for the second time—a wreck of a man—a murderer. But the mystery of a woman’s heart—!
“Well,” I heard Mr. Roddy say, “are we going to hang him?”
“No,” I cried, like a wild thing. “No, Judge. No! No! No!”
“And why not?” he asked, glaring at me.
“It’s against your oath, sir,” I said, like one inspired. “And it’s against honor to hang a creature with lies.”
The Judge thought a long time, struggling with himself, until his face was all drawn, but at last he touched the red-haired reporter on the elbow.
“She is right,” said he. “The incident is closed.”
Something in his low voice was so ringing that for a moment none of us spoke, and I could hear the drawn curtains at the window going flap-flap-flap in the breeze.