w, gentlemen. There is no one respects
it more than I. If this girl killed a man coldly and with reason
functioning in her mind, she is guilty. Hang her, gentlemen of the jury!
But, gentlemen, the law under which we live, you and I and all of us,
also says, and says wisely, that a mind not responsible for its acts, a
soul whose balance has been destroyed by the shrieking voices of mania,
shall not be held guilty...."

The jury that had listened with ill-concealed envy to the recital of the
amorous interne's promiscuous exploits, listened to Hazlitt and
experienced suddenly a fine rage against the deceased. Out of the young
attorney's florid utterings a question fired itself into the minds of
the jurors. The deceased had done what they all desired to do, but dared
not. This grinning, unscrupulous fiend of a hospital interne had
blithely taken what he desired and blithely discarded what he did not
desire. The twelve good men and true bethought them of their wives whom
they did not desire and yet kept. And of the young women and the things
of flesh and spirit they desired with every life-beat in them and yet
did not take. Was this terrible denial which, for reasons beyond their
incomplete brains, they imposed upon themselves, a meaningless,
profitless business? The bland interne was dead and unfortunately beyond
their punishment. Yet the fact that he had lived at all called for a
protest--some definitely framed expression which would throw a halo
about their own submission to women they did not desire, and their own
denial to women they did desire. The law, whose arrangements of words
are omniscient, provided such a halo.

Dr. Hamel, the interne under discussion, was dead and buried, and
therefore, properly speaking, not on trial. Nor yet was Pauline Pollard
on trial. The persons on trial were twelve good men and true who were
being called upon to decide, somewhat dramatically, whether they were
right in living in a manner persistently repugnant to them; whether
somebody else could get away with something which they themselves, not
daring to attempt, bitterly identified as sin.

In thirty minutes the still outraged jury was to file in and utter its
dignified protest. Pauline Pollard would again be free. And twelve men
would return to their homes with a high sense of having meted out
justice, not to Pauline or her amorous interne, but to themselves.

Enticing speculation, the yes or no of these twelve men, three days ago