At sixty-eight it is possible to look ahead--some; to form a purpose, with caution, remembering that if you don't make it, they'll say charitably: "Think of that! Sort of getting on, wasn't he?" He would not drink tonight. Well--dinner with Edith, maybe (and flowers), so maybe a glass or two of wine, nothing more-- _Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night, By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there aroused--the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me...._ T. J. Hunter dropped the folder of notes he had been studying, possibly for effect, and turned back to the jury. "In May of this year--the State will prove it--an illicit relation developed between Callista Blake and James Doherty, the husband of that Ann Doherty whose death, as you know, is the reason for this trial. Not to mince matters, the word is adultery, and I must remind you now, members of the jury, that Callista Blake is not here on trial for adultery. She is on trial for murder, nothing else. The State will prove the fact of adultery to establish motive--which, as you may also know, is not legally required, yet I think a rational mind is bound to demand it. How can we reasonably condemn anyone without at least some understanding of what made him act as the factual evidence says he did? "I want to make one thing clear. In a case of this sort the husband is automatically suspect, the chance of conspiracy so obvious that the police would be derelict in duty if they didn't examine it to the last scrap of a clue. That's been done. If anything at all had been uncovered involving James Doherty in this crime, you know he would not be at liberty. Nothing of the sort has been found; everything points the other way. He decisively broke off the affair more than a month before the murder. He tried to make amends for his folly. The State is convinced that in the death of Ann Doherty, Callista Blake, consumed by hatred and jealousy--and by a certain fear for herself, since she was pregnant--acted entirely alone. "I am sorry for her--who wouldn't be? You will be. Her difficulty was great, her position tragic. But as the State's representative, I remind you that instead of the many fair and decent solutions for her trouble that she might have chosen, the one she did choose was premeditated murder.