Up and down, back and forth, slowly, wearily walked the prisoner; and when the town clock struck eight, she mechanically counted each stroke.  As in drowning men, the landmarks of a lifetime rise, huddle, almost press upon the glazing eyes, so the phantasmagoria of Beryl’s past, seemed projected in strange luminousness upon the pall of the present, like profiles in silvery flame cast on a black curtain.

Holding her father’s hand, she walked in the Odenwald; sitting beside her mother on a carpet of purple vetches, she stemmed strawberries in a garden near Pistoja; clinging to Bertie’s jacket, she followed him across dimpling sands to dip her feet in the blue Mediterranean waves, that broke in laughter, showing teeth of foam, where dying sunsets reddened all the beach.  Through sunny arcades, flushed with pomegranate, glowing with orange, silvered with lemon blossoms, came the tinkling music of contadini bells, the bleating of kids, the twittering of happy birds, the distant chime of an Angelus; all the subtle harmony, the fragmentary melody that flickers through an Impromptu of Chopin or Schubert.  She saw the simulacrum of her former self, the proud, happy Beryl of old, singing from the score of the “Messiah”, in the organ loft of a marble church; she heard the rich tenor voice of her handsome brother, as he trilled a barcarole one night, crossing the Atlantic; she smelled the tuberoses at Mentone, the faint breath of lilies her father had loved so well, and then, blotting all else, there rose clear as some line of Morghen’s, that attic room; the invalid’s bed, the low chair beside it, the wasted figure, the suffering, fever-flushed face of the beloved mother, as she saw her last, with the Grand Duke jasmine fastened at her throat.

The door was thrown open, and the officer beckoned her to follow him.  Back into the crowded court-room, where people pressed even into the window sills for standing room, where Judge and counsel sat gravely expectant; where the stillness of death had suddenly fallen.  The officer conducted her to the bar, then drew back, and Mr. Dunbar came and stood at her side; resting his hand on the back of her chair.

In that solemn hush, the measured tramp of the jury advancing, and filing into their box, had the mournful, measured beat as of pall bearers, keeping step to a dismal dirge; and when the foreman laid upon the table the fatal brass unicorn, the muffled sound seemed ominous as the grating of a coffin lowered upon the cross bars of a gaping grave.  As the roll was called, each man rose, and answered in a low but distinct tone.  Then the clerk of the court asked: 

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?”

“We have,” replied the foreman.

“What say you!  Guilty, or not guilty?”

Beryl had risen, and the gaslight shining full upon her pale, Phidian face, showed no trace of trepidation.  Only the pathetic patience of a sublime surrender was visible on her frozen features.  The eyes preternaturally large and luminous were raised far above the sea of heads, and their strained gaze might almost have been fixed upon the unveiled face of the God she trusted.  Her hands were folded over her mother’s ring, her noble head thrown proudly back.