As a Frenchman, he had felt an irresistible aversion upon becoming convinced that Freya was a spy who had done great harm to his country....  Then as a man, he had commiserated her inconsequence, her contradictory and frivolous character, amounting almost to a crime, and her egoism as a beautiful woman and lover of luxury that had made her willing to suffer moral vileness in exchange for creature comfort.

Her story had attracted the lawyer with the palpitating interest of a novel of adventure.  Commiseration had finally developed the vehemence of a love affair.  Besides, the knowledge that the exploiters of this woman were the ones that had denounced her, had aroused his knightly enthusiasm in the defense of her indefensible cause.

Appearance before the Council of War had proved painful and dramatic.  Freya, who until then, had seemed brutalized by the regime of the prison, roused herself upon being confronted by a dozen grave and uniformed men.

Her first moves were those of every handsome and coquettish female.  She knew perfectly well her physical influence.  These soldiers transformed into judges were recalling those other flirts that she had seen at the teas and grand balls at the hotels....  What Frenchman can resist feminine attraction?...

She had smiled, she had replied to the first questions with graceful modesty, fixing her wickedly guileless eyes upon the officials seated behind the presidential table, and on those other men in blue uniform, charged with accusing her or reading the documents of her prosecution.

But something cold and hostile existed in the atmosphere and paralyzed her smiles, leaving her words without echo and making ineffectual the splendors of her eyes.  All foreheads were bowed under the weight of severe thought:  all the men in that instant appeared thirty years older.  They simply would not see such a one as she was, however much effort she might make.  They had left their admiration and their desires on the other side of the door.

Freya perceived that she had ceased to be a woman and was no more than one accused.  Another of her sex, an irresistible rival, was now engrossing everything, binding these men with a profound and austere love.  Instinct made her regard fixedly the white matron of grave countenance whose vigorous bust appeared over the head of the president.  She was Patriotism, Justice, the Republic, contemplating with her vague and hollow eyes this female of flesh and blood who was beginning to tremble upon realizing her situation.

“I do not want to die!” cried Freya, suddenly abandoning her seductions and becoming a poor, wretched creature crazed by fear.  “I am innocent.”

She lied with the absurd and barefaced illogicalness of one finding herself in danger of death.  It was necessary to re-read her first declarations, which she was now denying, of presenting afresh the material proofs whose existence she did not wish to admit, of making her entire past file by supported by that irrefutable data of anonymous origin.