All alive and awake she was for the rest of that horrible day, quivering and trembling and sobbing, half child, half woman, as the trial wore on. Ever and again the crimson flushed into her cheek, her eyes suffused, her head bent, in a very agony of shame; she heard horrible questions, horrible answers. She felt herself undraped before these inquisitorial eyes, and shrinking, drawing her cloak round her with shaking hands, she would try and hide her poor hot face. But as the day wore on, something of hope crept in warm about her heart. If Frank were here, he would not let them talk so--Frank, her lover. She heard again the passionate protestations of their short betrothal. She felt again his lips against hers. She was back again in the golden days when the sun flush of love was over all her life, and sun queen in those hours she had played with her happiness. And pitifully the tremulous lips murmured, “If Frank were here, he would not let them hurt me; if Frank were here!” What a strange, complicated Fenella! Arraigned for murder, she pleaded “Guilty.” “Guilty,” though her hands were clean! With the unthinking generosity of a child she did a woman’s deed with a man’s heart. She took her husband’s guiltless guilt upon herself, and cried, “It was I,” while yet the horror of his act was vibrating through her frame. She had not counted the cost, could not. But if all the sum of those dreadful hours and days had been spread out before her, with shining eyes she would have scanned it, and still have called out generously, “It was I.” But her heart was larger than her brain. Her brain failed her a little at the last. She was dim, confused, frightened. She forgot so much. These men who were there to judge her, noting the crouching, weeping girl, with golden hair disheveled, bloodshot eyes, weak and shrinking, _thinking_ her guilty, _pronounced_ her innocent, and sent her forth free. Free! but what a freedom! Where was Frank? Where was anybody? Who was there to take her in his strong arms, let her hide her face upon his breast, weep there until her shame had died away, and the memory of her degradation was washed clean. Who, indeed? The man who had defended her, who had been her lover, who had been her friend, came to her and he--he would not take her hand. He had spoken to her of her boy, and the cold emptiness of her heart ached with the sudden rush of her emotion as she cried out, with outstretched arms: “My boy! bring me my boy!” To press the child in her arms, to feel the soft down of his cheek against hers, to hear the lisping, “Muzzer, muzzer, dear,” from his lips, to have his arms about her--this, this would save her reason. She felt her reason going, felt her mind darkened, the path before her no longer clear. She was in a gloomy world, groping helplessly for a warm, human clasp of fellowship. Jacynth, her friend, answered her mother-cry. Answered, and left her childless.