"There seems to be no question of her guilt," said Fenella, "so we can neither expect nor desire that she should escape punishment altogether. The poor thing--she's scarcely more than a girl--will say nothing in self-defence, but when we remember how the soul of a woman shrinks from a crime of that kind we feel that she must have suffered some great injustice, some secret wrong, which, if it could be brought out in Court...." "I see," said Stowell. Fenella paused a moment and then said, in a voice that was becoming tremulous, "Therefore we have thought that for this case we need an advocate who loves women as women and can see into the heart of a woman when she's down and done, because God has made him so. And that's why...." "Yes?" "That's why I've brought this first case to you." Stowell could scarcely speak to answer her. But after a moment he stammered that he would do his utmost; and then Fenella brought out of her hand-bag some printed papers that were a report of the preliminary inquiry. "I'll read them to-night," he said, putting them into his breast pocket. "Of course you'll require to see the prisoner?" "Yes." "She hasn't opened her lips yet, but you must get her to speak." "I'll try." "That's all for the present," said Fenella, rising; and at the next moment she was smiling again, and her eyes were beginning to glow. "So this is where you live?" "No, this is my office; I live at the other side of the house." "Really? I wonder...." "You would like to see my living rooms?" "I'd love to. I've always wanted to see how young bachelors live alone." "Come this way then." Stowell had not realised what he was doing for himself until he was on the landing, with the key in the lock, and Fenella behind him, but then came a stabbing memory of another woman in the same position. "Come in," he cried (his voice was quivering now), and drawing up the Venetian blind he let in a flood of sunshine and the soft song of the sea. "What a comfy little room!" said Fenella. As she looked around her eyes seemed to light up everything. "It's easy to see that you've been racing all over the earth, sir. That Neapolitan girl on the mantelpiece came from Rome, didn't she?" "She did." "And that lamp from Venice, and that silver bowl from Cairo, and that cedar-wood photograph frame from Sorrento?" "Quite right." "Books! Books! Books! All law books, I see. Not a human thing among them, I'll be bound. And yet they're all terribly, fearfully, tragically human, I suppose?" "That's so." "Gas fire? So you have a gas fire for the cold wet nights?" "Yes, a bachelor has to have...." But another stabbing memory came, and he could get no further. "And so this is where you sit alone until all hours of the night--reading, reading, reading?" He tried to speak but could not. She glanced at the bedroom door which stood open, and said, with eyes that seemed to laugh, "Is that your....?"