, it is concealed because simple people are actually unable to
express it, and nobody else divines it."

"The law certainly does not shine when it comes to a case requiring much
delicacy of perception," said Trent. "It goes wrong easily enough over
the commonplace criminal. As for the people with temperaments who get
mixed up in legal proceedings, they must feel as if they were in a
forest of apes, whether they win or lose. Well, I dare say it's good for
them and their sort to have their noses rubbed in reality now and again.
But what would twelve red-faced realities in a jury-box have done to
Marlowe? His story would, as he says, have been a great deal worse than
no defense at all. It's not as if there were a single piece of evidence
in support of his tale. Can't you imagine how the prosecution would tear
it to rags? Can't you see the judge simply taking it in his stride when
it came to the summing up? And the jury--you've served on juries, I
expect--in their room, snorting with indignation over the feebleness of
the lie, telling each other it was the clearest case they ever heard of,
and that they'd have thought better of him if he hadn't lost his nerve
at the crisis, and had cleared off with the swag as he intended. Imagine
yourself on that jury, not knowing Marlowe, and trembling with
indignation at the record unrolled before you--cupidity, murder,
robbery, sudden cowardice, shameless, impenitent, desperate lying! Why,
you and I believed him to be guilty until--"

"I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon!" interjected Mr. Cupples, laying
down his knife and fork. "I was most careful, when we talked it all over
the other night, to say nothing indicating such a belief. _I_ was always
certain that he was innocent."

"You said something of the sort at Marlowe's just now. I wondered what
on earth you could mean. Certain that he was innocent! How can you be
certain? You are generally more careful about terms than that, Cupples."

"I said 'certain,'" Mr. Cupples repeated firmly.

Trent shrugged his shoulders. "If you really were, after reading my
manuscript and discussing the whole thing as we did," he rejoined, "then
I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in the
operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad
Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism
too, unless I misunderstand that system. Why, man--"

"Let me say a word," Mr. Cupples interposed aga