"Well, as you know, I set a very high value on your work myself." His quick relaxed smile was including the jury somehow. _Wish I could do that._ Or some of the jury: his glance had been directed, she thought, toward the crinkle-faced middle-aged lady. _Name?--Butler, Miss Helen Butler._ Callista ventured to meet the woman's eyes, did so, and was frightened to realize that for the instant's duration she was not certain what her own facial muscles were doing. _What did I actually do?--make a face?_ Surely there had been a gleam like friendliness in Helen Butler; just as surely, the woman was now looking down at her hands, and away across the room, troubled but otherwise communicating nothing at all. "However, Callista, I was thinking chiefly of other things Miss Nolan said--for instance her belief that you might have been experiencing a serious depression, perhaps suicidal, last July and part of August. Was she right, Callista? Were you at that time, or any part of that time, actually contemplating doing away with yourself?" "Yes, I--yes, I was." "It was a definite intention, my dear?" "For a while, yes. It wasn't so until I happened to see those plants in my mother's garden. Maybe not too definite even then. I only thought: this would be one way. Then I was thinking, why not take a few, have them on hand if things got worse? Then I was actually taking them, breaking off the tops and shoving them away in the tall grass, keeping the roots." "But I presume you must have been working up to that state of mind for quite a while?" "Yes, I had been. It was like a progressive illness--well, I suppose that's what it really is. Each day a little emptier than the one before, a little harder to care about anything." "You made that infusion of the roots in brandy?" "Yes, the next day." "Do you recall the circumstances--what part of the day it was, say?" "It was evening, after I'd stopped trying to write that letter--the one I didn't finish, didn't mail." "You gave up entirely on that letter, didn't you?--I mean, you decided it couldn't do any good?" "Oh, that's true. I was imagining communication when--when in the nature of things there just couldn't be any. Jimmy--Jim Doherty and I never really--never _saw_ each other, never heard--" "Callista, I'm not sure the jury--it's a difficult thing to express."