Immediately after recess Mr. Bourke began his summing up. He commenced quietly, shaking the loose cloth of the table in an absent manner. His language was colloquial as he spoke to the jury of its grave responsibilities, and complimented it upon the “unusual intelligence which it had so far made evident.” He passed naturally to the subject in hand, and dwelt eloquently upon the character of the defendant, of her lonely pathetic youth, her high ideals, her remarkable intelligence, her ignorance of the world which had led her to fall in love with the first handsome and attractive man that had addressed her.

His voice rose to tragic pitch as he dwelt upon the terrible awakening of such a woman, bound for life to such a man,—a sensual, ill-tempered, selfish brute, who was a disgrace to the nineteenth century.

He depicted two years of uncomplaining wifely devotion (until Patience became lost in admiration of the defendant), the husband’s frantic rages about nothing, his unrecognition of her superiority, his ignorant determination to make her his slave—his plaything—she, a woman whom such men as James E. Field and Gardiner Peele delighted to honour.

Then he dropped again into pathos (which never for a moment degenerated into bathos) and described the desolate life of such a woman in an empty frivolous brainless society (faint murmur and indignant rustle in the gallery), a society of idle people with neither soul nor intelligence, but who squandered the money wrested from the People, the great People, of whom the Gentlemen of the Jury were twelve worthy and doubtless long suffering members.

It was not until he had emphasised and recapitulated with every resource of his splendid vocabulary, every modulation of his glorious voice, by controlled and telling gesture, by sudden tremendous bursts of indignation, the married life of the prisoner, that he passed to the day and night of the tragedy. He began with the morning, and dwelt upon every detail of the day. Before he reached midnight he had Beverly Peele in a frame of mind for both suicide and murder. He sent him to bed with black skin and white flecked nose and chaos in his heart. With a magnificent burst of scorn he quoted his shameful language when his wife had offered to get him the morphine, the oaths he had used to a “refined and elegant and patient woman.” Then he took him to the lavatory, showed him jerking the stopper from the morphine bottle, and recklessly pouring a fourth of its contents into a glass. “He knew that he had to die anyhow, and he could at least die happy in a hideous revenge.” In brief and vivid phrase he cited several similar instances in legal history.

Then he returned to Peele Manor and denounced the jealous woman who for five years had nursed fury in her heart, and who, on the witness stand, here, Gentlemen of the Jury, conceived, at the unfortunate suggestion of the speaker, the frightful revenge upon a woman who had treated her with unvarying kindness. She did not speak at once, partly because her lying tale needed rehearsing, partly because she believed that the case for the prosecution would win without her. But when she saw that the case for the prosecution was wholly lost she arrayed herself like an angel, that she might the better impose upon the unworldly Gentlemen of the Jury, and swore away a woman’s life.

The several assertions on the defendant’s part that she felt disposition to murder he tore to rags and flung in the face of the jury. Had not every high tempered person—could not the Gentlemen of the Jury recall having exclaimed in bitter moments: “I wish you were dead! I could kill you!” With deep regret and remorse he would confess that he had used similar expressions many times.

Then with consummate skill he dilated upon the impossibility of so clever a woman as the defendant doing aught so stupid as to murder in the manner of the accusation. When there was nothing left to say on this subject he expatiated upon the lack of motive with a technical and personal brilliancy which made even the cross-grained old judge lean forward with a cynical smile.

The interviews, even the final ones, with the mysterious stranger, he treated with contempt, although the contempt was sufficiently long drawn out to impress the jury with every most insignificant detail. It, was the mere longing for companionship of a lonely woman: that was the beginning and the end of it. The lover, the intention of either to marry, he disposed of with a vehemence which made Simms twist about suddenly and look at Lansing; but the young man was regarding his chief with rapt admiration.

Not so much as the scraping of a boot heel was heard in the court room. Patience glanced at the district attorney. His face was set and sullen.

After every possible point had been considered Bourke concluded with an appeal so stirring, so ringing, so thrilling that every person in the court room except the district attorney sat forward and held his breath. No such burst of passion had ever been heard in that room before. Patience covered her face with her hands. Her heart beat suffocatingly. The blood pounded in her ears; but not one note of that wonderful voice, not one phrase of fire, escaped her.

Is there any possible condition in which a man can appear to such supreme advantage as when pleading for the life of a fellow being, more particularly of a young and beautiful woman? How paltry all the time-worn rescues of woman from sinking ship and runaway horse and burning house. A great criminal lawyer standing before the jury box with a life in his hand has the unique opportunity to display all the best gifts ever bestowed upon man: genius, brain, passion, heart, soul, eloquence, a figure instinct with grace and virility, a face blazing with determination to snatch a man or woman from the most awful of dooms.

And all in two short hours.

If those in the court room for whom the case had no personal interest were at Bourke’s feet, hanging upon his words, adoring him for the moment, what were the feelings of the woman for whom he was making so desperate and manly a fight? She forgot her danger, forgot everything but the man, the reckless joy of loving, of being swept out of her calm orbit at last. Her analytical brain was dulled, her arms ached, her heart shook her body.

As Bourke made a few supplementary remarks calculated to take the wind out of the district attorney’s sails,—references to the young man’s ambition, his youthful eagerness to become famous, what the winning of such a great case would mean to him, and to his remarkable cleverness and skill with a jury,—Patience heard Simms say to Lansing: “My God! Bourke has surpassed even himself. Even he never got as high as that before.”

“He’s the greatest man in the country, God bless him!” said Lansing.

As Bourke finally dropped upon his chair he turned to Patience. Their eyes met and lingered; and in that moment each passed into the other’s keeping.