After today's ordeal of listening--anticlimactic, yes, the Judge's voice roughened at the end of his summing-up, at moments not plainly audible, running down like a mechanism with a used-up spring--after the jury had retired, Edith had seen Victoria Chalmers press her hand to her broad pale forehead, rise, accept with sad patience the Associate Professor's fumbling courtesy with her coat, and move away. She would be having one of her headaches. No nod for Edith--Herb Chalmers gave her one--and no backward look at the arena; but as Victoria turned her head the light washed coldly across her face, and Edith saw plainly that even Victoria was a little changed. A sag of the mouth, a droop of shoulders and sturdy frame, a slowness and uncertainty in the hands adjusting her coat that suggested old age, although she was still in the early forties. She seemed doubtful of her steps, an unsteady hand undecided whether to grasp her handbag or tuck it under her arm. At the exit she did look backward once, with vagueness, as though there might be something she wished to say; or even someone she wished to find. Then like an old lady she rested her arm on Herb's clumsy hand, and was gone. Edith found it was now natural, inevitable, to pity Victoria Chalmers--whatever pity might be worth. Earlier, until the jury went out through that doorway, there had somehow not been time. There was time now for every sort of thought, regret and fear and wonder, time for a swarm of thoughts crowding for attention, pity the least of them--time for anything the mind could do except for the discoveries of happiness and peace. Pity, maybe, was no more than a private vice, with varied by-products, some good, some bad. Herb Chalmers had come back an hour later, alone. He made as though to sit down by himself, but seeing her look his way, he shambled to her, side-stepping along a row of vacant seats, and let himself down by her in a long-legged sprawl. "I suppose nothing's happened yet?" "Nothing. Is Mrs. Chalmers all right?" "I don't know," he said, his weariness lending the force of truth to the absent reply. He yawned convulsively, apologizing for it in a mumble. "She's pretty used up of course. Felt she couldn't stay, and I thought that was sensible. I took her home, and maybe she can sleep. It's not as if we could do anything now. For a while. You see, I feel sure that they--" he rubbed large hands over his face and shook his head--"no, God knows I don't feel sure of anything any more. Anything at all." Herb also had aged. More deeply sunken lines, more gray in the thinning hair. He had evidently cut himself shaving that morning; the scab at the edge of his gaunt jawbone was overlaid by the day's growth of silvery bristle, making a sort of Skid Row shadow across his wan, weak, intelligent face.