t all," he asked the trembling woman, his voice
barren of all feeling and edged with biting incredulity. "Didn't it
strike you at all, when you kissed the co-respondent, that you were
betraying your husband's confidence in you?"

"No, not when I kissed him. We--we cared for each other--I admit to
that; but--but kissing did not seem wrong."

"You didn't consider kissing wrong?"

"No."

"At what point then in your intimate relations with a man--with the
co-respondent in particular--would you have considered that wrong
began and right ended?"

The wretched woman had looked pitiably at the judge. The judge looked
unseeingly before him into the well of the court.

"At what point?" Traill had insisted.

"I don't know how to say it," she pleaded feebly.

"Then can I assist you? Would you have considered it wrong--having
kissed you--for him to put his arms round you?"

"Yes, I think so."

"There is all the difference, then, in your mind between a man's
kissing you and putting his arms round you. All the difference
between right and wrong?"

"No, I suppose there isn't."

"Then you would not have considered that wrong?"

"No."

"Would you have considered it wrong to sit on his knee?"

Seeing how her case was weakening--realizing how he was belittling
her scruples--she had admitted that she would not think it wrong,
hoping that the ready admission of that would remedy the effect of
her previous indecision.

"Then am I to understand--" asked Traill with a voice stirred in
well-simulated anger, "am I to understand that because you loved the
co-respondent, you kissed him, thinking no wrong in it and yet,
thinking no wrong in sitting on his knee or having his arms about
you, you yet--loving him--refused these things in which you saw no
harm? Is that what you wish his lordship and the jury to understand?"

"I--I--may have let him put his arms round me--perhaps I did sit on
his knee--once or twice."

"Then why," shouted Traill, "when the last witness affirmed that she
had seen you sitting in the drawing-room with the co-respondent's
arm round your neck, did you so vehemently deny it?"

Into the trap she had fallen--into the trap which with his cold
cunning he had laid for her--and from that moment, rigidly denying
her misconduct on her oath before God, the wretched creature was
brought on the rack of his questioning to almost every admission but
that of adultery. At last Sally had left the court. She could bear