"That is just the one theory they never will conceive or accept. They know better. That sort of thing never was in Mrs. Balfame's line. The women know that if she doesn't exactly hate men, she has a quiet but profound contempt for them. I wish you could have seen them--her particular crowd--at Mrs. Battle's the day of the arrest. Just to draw them out, I suggested that some man who was in love with her might have fired the shot. They nearly annihilated me. Mrs. Balfame, guilty of the crime of murder or not, is fairly screwed on her pedestal so far as the women are concerned. As for the men, such a theory will never occur to them for the simple reason that not one has ever been attracted by her; she's the very last woman they would expect any man to commit murder for." Rush, wondering if these observations were dictated by venom or a mere regard for facts, shot a veiled glance at the divan; Miss Crumley's soft carefully de-Americanised voice had not sharpened, but her face was very mobile for all its reserve. She was looking almost aggressively impersonal and had sunk back against the high pillows in a limp indolent line. Facts, of course! "It is very like a political campaign," said he. "Nobody is quite sane in this town just now, and the wildest conclusions are bound to be jumped at. It is not only embryo novelists that have romantic imaginations. Just reflect that I am Mrs. Balfame's counsel, that I am still a young man and unmarried, and that she is a beautiful woman and looks many years younger than her age. There you are." Alys made an abrupt change of position which in one less graceful would have suggested a wriggle. However, her voice remained impersonal. "But this community, including her friends, believe that she did it. They want her to get off, but they have settled the question in their own minds and are not looking around for any one else." "Cummack and several of the other men are, besides Balfame's old political pals--and his enemies, for that matter. Old Dutch, who is far shrewder than his son, is by no means certain of Mrs. Balfame's guilt and has put a detective on the job--against her acquittal, having no desire to see suspicion pointing at his house again. He is just the old sentimentalist to settle on me." He saw the pink fade out of her cheeks, leaving her face like cold ivory, but she answered steadily: "You have your alibi. You went to Brooklyn that evening to keep an appointment."