"Some fool," Warner said--"some fool in the jury-room is bound to open a window, to let the smoke out." "He was shouting pretty plain. I could make out the words a block away. Any legal significance, you think?" "I doubt it, Herb." Warner looked up hopelessly. "Anyway she gains nothing from a mistrial. Likely it wouldn't even go before the same judge, a second time. Everything that could happen," he said. "Malice, chance, blind circumstance, human frailty. Even the malice nobody's fault really--not even T.J.'s. He's something worked by strings." "They can't find first degree," Edith said, and hated the querulous shake in her voice, its jaded insistence on what she could not know. "Twenty to life," said Warner. "She's young," Edith said. "She's very young." Herb asked: "Wouldn't actually be twenty, would it? Don't they--" "She's young," said Warner, his voice all bitterness, "and it wouldn't actually be twenty years." The door on the right opened for a court officer, who spoke to someone over his shoulder. Warner stood up, breathing carefully. Edith caught his arm; he looked down almost angrily. "Cecil, tell her I'd like her to try it in watercolor." "Oh. Yes. I'll go with her now." He was hurrying down the aisle. Herb said: "What--he meant to say he'd go to her, I suppose." "He knew what he was saying. Sit here. Stay with me, please." She watched the courtroom coming alive. Knowledge of the jury's returning had spread as if by a spark of telepathy. A group of the last-ditch curious straggled back from the corridors, and newsmen who must have been waiting at some point of vantage outside, and Mr. Delehanty--gravely ready at his desk before the Twelve filed in. Judge Terence Mann came in and took his place without delay, moving for once not easily but with a suggestion of middle age. He did not reach as usual for his note-pad and pencil; he dropped his thin rugged hands on the desk and stared at the space between them until his eyes must turn, like all the others, to the door on the left. She was with Cecil Warner. She looked at once for Edith, and seeing her stepfather also she smiled once, quickly and warmly--a new thing to remember. She held closely to Warner's arm until they reached the defense section; then she stood alone, not troubling to seat herself. No doubt someone, the Judge or Mr. Delehanty, should have told her to sit down; but she remained standing until the jury, at Judge Mann's word, self-consciously rose. Mr. Francis Fielding looked tired and for the first time regretful. "Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict in the case now before you?" Peter Anson said: "We have." Callista looked on the jury as Edith had never seen her look on others before. It was a look of patience resembling friendliness, a look that one might naturally give to strangers who were confronted by a painful difficulty and not quite able to understand its nature. "What is your verdict?"