Patience had taken a chair and was fanning herself slowly. She answered with a judicial air, as of one deciding some abstract point to which she had given exhaustive study: “The lack is spiritual emotion. People of strong natures who are really in love are shaken by a passion that for the time being demands no physical expression. It is only when it subsides, in fact, that the other manifests itself. On the other hand, the unimpassioned, the physically meagre, are incapable of even imagining such an exaltation of emotion. It is the supreme convulsion of mystery. And it must be impossible to feel it more than once in a lifetime—for more than one person, I mean.” “Have you ever felt it?” he asked abruptly. He was sitting opposite her, his brows drawn together, regarding her intently. Her cool impersonality nonplussed him. “No.” “Then how do you know?” “From the organ. If one wants to read the riddle of human nature let him listen to the organ for ten minutes. It lashes the soul—the emotional nature—up to its utmost possibilities. One knows instinctively—that is, if one is given to reasoning at all; for instincts are dead letters without analysis—that only one other force can cause a mightier tumult, a greater exaltation. Those that do not reason mistake it for a desire to spread their wings and fly to the throne of grace.” Bourke set his lips and looked at the floor. “Of course you are right,” he said. “A man would never know that until he had felt it. It takes a woman to divine it. Perhaps it is as well he doesn’t know it—there is one disappointment the less in life if such moments never come to him; and I doubt if they come to many. Either the savage is too strong in most of us, or we never come within range of the responsive spark. I have held that if there is any meaning at all in the progress of man out of barbarism it is that he shall become a brain with a refinement and intensity of passion which shall give happiness without disgust. But you go beyond me.” “Oh, we are both right,” said Patience, rising. “We are much better off than our ancestors. I like so much to talk to you. When I am free you must come to see me often.” “I shall, indeed. How gracefully you fan yourself. I never saw any one use the fan in exactly the same way.” “I learned how from the old Spanish women in Monterey. They hold the thumb outwards, you know. That makes all the difference in the world. _Au revoir._” XII The trial began on the eighth of March. Patience slept ill the night before, and arose early. She looked forward to the day’s ordeal with mingled nervousness and curiosity. Her faith in Bourke was complete, and her mind was of the order that craves experience. She could not divest herself of the idea that she was about to play the part of heroine in a great human drama. And assuredly there has been no such theatre as the court room since the world began.