"I see! I see!" went on Jephson, oratorically and loudly, having the jury and audience in mind. "A case of the Arabian Nights, of the enscorcelled and the enscorcellor."
"I don't think I know what you mean," said Clyde.
"A case of being bewitched, my poor boy—by beauty, love, wealth, by things that we sometimes think we want very, very much, and cannot ever have—that is what I mean, and that is what much of the love in the world amounts to."
"Yes, sir," replied Clyde, quite innocently, concluding rightly that this was a mere show of rhetoric on Jephson's part.
"But what I want to know is—how was it that loving Miss Alden as much as you say you did—and having reached that relationship which should have been sanctioned by marriage—how was it that you could have felt so little bound or obligated to her as to entertain the idea of casting her over for this Miss X? Now just how was that? I would like to know, and so would this jury, I am sure. Where was your sense of gratitude? Your sense of moral obligation? Do you mean to say that you have none? We want to know."
This was really cross-examination—an attack on his own witness. Yet Jephson was within his rights and Mason did not interfere.
"Well ..." and here Clyde hesitated and stumbled, quite as if he had not been instructed as to all this beforehand, and seemed to and did truly finger about in his own mind or reason for some thought that would help him to explain all this. For although it was true that he had memorized the answer, now that he was confronted by the actual question here in court, as well as the old problem that had so confused and troubled him in Lycurgus, he could scarcely think clearly of all he had been told to say, but instead twisted and turned, and finally came out with:
"The fact is, I didn't think about those things at all very much. I couldn't after I saw her. I tried to at times, but I couldn't. I only wanted her and I didn't want Miss Alden any more. I knew I wasn't doing right—exactly—and I felt sorry for Roberta—but just the same I didn't seem able to do anything much about it. I could only think of Miss X and I couldn't think of Roberta as I had before no matter how hard I tried."
"Do you mean to say that you didn't suffer in your own conscience on account of this?"
"Yes, sir, I suffered," replied Clyde. "I knew I wasn't doing right, and it made me worry a lot about her and myself, but just the same I didn't seem to be able to do any better." (He was repeating words that Jephson had written out for him, although at the time he first read them he felt them to be fairly true. He had suffered some.)