.
But now Hazlitt sat with an odd indifference in his thought. The crowd
waiting avidly for the dramatic moment of the verdict; living
vicariously the suspense of the defendant--depressed him. The newspaper
reporters buzzing around, forming themselves into relays between the
press table and the door, further depressed him. He felt himself
somewhere else, and the scene was a reality which intruded.

There was a dream in Hazlitt which sometimes turned itself on like a
light and revealed the emptiness of life without Rachel, the emptiness
of courtrooms, verdicts, crowds. Yes, even the emptiness of the struggle
between good and evil. He sat thinking of her now, contrasting the
virginal figure of her with the coarseness of the thing in which he had
been engaged. There was something about her ... something ... something.
And the old refrain of his dream like a haunting popular ballad, started
again here in the crowded courtroom.

He remembered the eyes of Rachel, the quick gestures of her full-grown
hands that moved always as in sudden afterthoughts. Virginal was the
word that came most often to his thought. Not the virginity that spells
a piquant preface to sensualism. She would always be virginal, even
after they were married. In his arms she would remain virginal, because
there was something in her, something beyond flesh. His heart choked at
the memory of it, and his face saddened. Something he could not see or
place in a circle of words, that did not exist for his eyes or his
thought, and yet that he must follow. Even after he had won her there
would be this thing he could not see; that trailed a dream song in his
heart and kept him groping toward the far lips of the singer. Yes, they
would marry. She had refused to see him twice since the night he had
wept on the stair, leaving her. But the memories of that night had
adjusted themselves. He had seen love in the eyes of Rachel as he held
her hand. She had laughed love to him, given him for an instant the
vision of beauty-lighted places waiting for him. The rest had been ...
neurasthenia. Thus he had forgotten her words and his tears and the
vivid moment when he had seen himself reflected in her eyes as a horror.
He had tried twice to see her. He would continue trying, and some day
she would again open the door to him, laughing, whispering ... "I'm so
lonely. I'm glad you've come." In the meantime he would continue sending
her letters. Once each week he had been writing