that you expect in a theatre between the acts, rather than in a court of justice at the solemn crisis of a solemn trial.  It was like a class-room with the master called away.  Hats were put on again in the bulging galleries; hardly a tongue was still.  On the bench a red-robed magnate and another in knee-breeches exchanged views upon the enlarged photographs which had played so prominent a part in the case; in the well the barristers’ wigs nodded or shook over their pink blotters and their quill pens; gentlemen of the Press sharpened their pencils and indulged in prophecy; and on their right, between the reporters and the bench, the privileged few, the literary and theatrical elect, discussed the situation with abnormal callousness, masking emotion with a childlike cynicism of sentiment and phrase.

And for once the stranger in their midst, the man with more outward distinction than any one of them, the unknown man with the snowy hair, could afford to listen to what they had to say.

“No chance, my dear man.  Not an earthly!”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“Will you bet?”

“No, hang it!  What a beast you are!  But I thought the woman was speaking the truth.”

“You heard what the judge said.  Where’s your corroboration?  No, they ought never to have let her go into the box.  I hear she insisted.  But it hasn’t saved anybody yet.”

“The new law?  Then it shows her pluck!”

“But not necessarily her innocence, dear boy.”

Thus one shaven couple.  Others had already exhausted the subject.

“Yes, I finished it down at Westgate last week.”

“Satisfied?”

“In a way.  It depends so much on the cast.”

“These actor-managers—­what?”

“More or less.  I must be off.  Dining out.”

“What!  Not going to wait for the end of the fourth act?”

“No, I’m late as it is.  Ta-ta!”

The white-haired man was amused.  He did not turn round, nor, if he had, would he have known the retreating gentleman for the most eminent of living playwrights; but he knew the reason for his sudden retreat.  A hush had fallen, and some one had whispered, “They’re coming!” The light-hearted chatter had died away on the word; perhaps it was not so light-hearted after all.  But the alarm was false, there was no sign of the jury, and the talk rose again, as the wind will in a storm.

“We shall want a glass when this is over,” whispered one of the pair who had argued about the case.

“And we’ll have it, too, old man!” rejoined his friend.

The white-haired man was grimly interested.  So this was the way men talked while waiting to hear a fellow-creature sentenced to death!  It was worth knowing.  And this was what the newspaper men would call a low buzz—­an expectant hush—­this animated babble!  Yet the air was charged with emotion, suppressed perhaps, but none the less distinguishable in every voice.