That woman was envying Mrs. Clarke, it seemed, but surely not envying her innocence.  Dion began to be conscious of faint breaths from the furnace of desire, and suddenly he saw the gaunt and sickly-smiling head of hypocrisy, like the flat and tremulously moving head of a serpent, lifted up above the court.  Only a little way off Robin, now better, but still “not quite the thing,” was lying in his cozy cot in the nursery of No. 5 Little Market Street, with Rosamund sitting beside him.  The window to-day, for once, would probably be shut as a concession to Robin’s indisposition.  A lamp would be burning perhaps.  In fancy, Dion saw Rosamund’s head lit up by a gentle glow, her hair giving out little gleams of gold, as if fire were caught in its meshes.  How was it that her head always suggested to him purity; and not only her purity but the purity of all sweet, sane and gloriously vigorous women—­those women who tread firmly, nobly, in the great central paths of life?  He did not know, but he was certain that the head of no impure, of no lascivious woman could ever look like his Rosamund’s.  That nursery, holding little Robin and his mother in the lamplight, was near to this crowded court, but it was very far away too, as far as heaven is from hell.  It would be good, presently, to go back to it.

Chime after chime dropped down frostily into the almost rancid heat of the court.  Time was sending its warning that night was coming to London.

An epidemic of fidgeting and of coughing seized the crowd, which was evidently beginning to feel the stinging whip of an intense irritation.

“What on earth,” said the voice of a man, expressing the thought which bound all these brains together, “what on earth can the jury be up to?”

Surely by now everything for and against Mrs. Clarke must have been discussed ad nauseam.  Only the vainest of repetitions could be occupying the time of the jury.  People began positively to hate those twelve uninteresting men, torn from their dull occupations to decide a woman’s fate.  Even Mrs. Chetwinde showed vexation.

“This is really becoming ridiculous,” she murmured.  “Even twelve fools should know when to give their folly a rest.”

“I suppose there must be one or two holding out against all argument and persuasion.  Don’t you think so?” said Dion, almost morosely.

“I dare say.  I know a great deal about individual fools, but very little about them in dozens.  The heat is becoming unbearable.”

She sighed deeply and moved in her seat, opening and shutting her fan.

“She must be enduring torment,” muttered Dion.

“Yes; even Cynthia can hardly be proof against this intolerable delay.”

Another dropping down of chimes:  eight o’clock!  A long murmur went through the crowd.  Some one said:  “They’re coming at last.”