new factors of life are realized. All is a correc

tion, a readjustment.

This is gradual, but occasionally, very occasionally, by some mental or spiritual cataclysm all on the slate is sponged clear. And a new and startling departure takes its place. As we see in the inner personality of Anna Janssen the change from the petty arithmetic of Broadway, the venal crooked sums of Sinister Street, to the gigantic calculus of life as the Lord God conceived it, when He formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul....

The district attorney turned from his last witness to the twelve men in the box. "Gentlemen," he said, in the manner of a workman well satisfied with the progress of the job in hand, "I have proved the crime and proved the perpetrator, the circumstances, the setting, the motive. There is but one more thing to be done to clinch this case home like a nail in a horse's shoe. It is now ten years between the time this murder was committed and the bringing of the prisoner to the bar of justice. There is but one more thing to do to remove the smallest iota of doubt that the prisoner at the bar and Anna Janssen, Alastair de Vries's mistress, are one and the same person. And to prove this I shall call to the witness-stand the detective who arrested Anna

Janssen in Tahiti, and in whose custody the prisoner has been from that day until she was brought to justice here a period of nine years and four months in all."

"Officer Thomas McCarthy!"

"Officer Thomas McCarthy to the stand."

The public craned forward, and with that strange shifting sound that betokens an immensity of interest they settled themselves in their seats for the recital of the detective. Here was the great attraction of the trial-the story of McCarthy and Anna Janssen alone on a desert island, a murderess and the officer who arrested her. More than the morbid interest of the killing of De Vries, more than the realistic tale of old New York that was, more than the spectacle of a woman dicing for her life, more than the prospect of watching Donegan, the greatest of criminal lawyers, harass the court, and pound the battered witnesses, and at last possibly and probably carry off the prisoner as in an oldtime rescue from Tyburn, was the promised recital of the adventure in the lonely Southern sea. There had been one romantic story of it in one day of the papers, and then no more, for the matter would have called forth intense comment from the papers, arousing sympathy or hatred, and the case was sub judice.

But that one story stirred the imagination of the public. And the sordid tale told of a woman killing

her fickle lover in an attack of offended vanity faded into a golden haze of romance. The scented smell of the tropics came to their nostrils, and their eyes saw golden sands and phosphorescent seas. And here the palms murmured with a rustle as of exotic silks, and the Bird of Paradise winged its iridescent flight through the opaque Marquesan dusk. And the spirits of strange gods moved upon the face of the waters.

Here was a setting for Scheherazade and here characters for a master writer: a patrolman of New York, young, athletic, unspoiled, canny with the knowledge of his native city, brave as only his kind is brave; and here a woman from the sloughs of the Tenderloin, an admitted beauty, a proven murderess.

What drama had happened in that isle of dreams, in that immense act of nine rolling years? And did she love him, or did she hate him? And had he succumbed to her, as Adam to Lilith in Eden, before Eve was? Or had he resisted her as Anthony of Egypt resisted the succuba in the desert near Fayum? And did she wheedle him with words sweeter than honey? Or did she curse him with strange black blasphemies? Or was it just one long, dumb vigil of hatred? Or had they become friends, hunter and hunted, marooned now on the islands of strange dead gods?

In God's name, what?

At any rate they would soon know.
"Officer Thomas McCarthy, this way!"

Then, of a sudden, up rose Howard Donegan. The judge on his bench, the jurymen, the prosecuting attorney, the court, the prisoner herself, all looked at him with a hesitant surprise. Somehow his action was surprisingly dramatic. He stood up slowly and said nothing, but looked around. Into the drama of crime and romance, there was injected a new element, powerful, sluggish, but immensely

sure.

"If it please the Court," went his heavy, significant voice, "may I say a few words?"

"It is hardly regular, at this period, Mr. Donegan, ," the judge said, puzzled. "Surely you will have an opportunity later on."

"The opportunity is opportune only now." Like some strange gargoyle in an old cathedral the great animal appeared. His eyes, under their threatening hoods, were black and beady like the eyes of some malevolent creature of the jungle. His mouth, a wide, thin slit, pouted like the mouth of a fish. His sedentary body was massive and grotesque like some monster of a mad artist's drawing. His voice creaked like unoiled machinery. ButGod!-what power was there!

"Your Honor, men of the jury, and Mr. District Attorney, at any point I could have obstructed the course of this trial until all of you were weary in

your chairs. I could have obfuscated facts and motives and testimony until you were as uncertain of truth as Pilate. The woman Wilkins-I could have shown that her word was no more to be depended on than the word of the village idiot. Mr. Howland Christy, De Vries's relative-I could have shaken him on the stand until he would have been uncertain of his testimony, for he is an honest And the usher of the cabaret-if I had concentrated on him, I could have made that whiskysodden brain, that broken will, contradict everything he had said.

"But I did none of these things. I made no haze of doubt out of honest facts. For why? Because these facts are true. I grant them freely!"

There were a rustle and a murmur in the room. The public was suddenly aghast. What was this from Donegan? Treachery? Who ever heard of a counsel granting things like that? Good Lord! what was the man doing? The murmuring went on in spite of the judge's gavel, the attendants' cries.

Donegan swept the room with his black, minatory glance, and the murmuring died.

"Your Honor, Mr. District Attorney, men of the jury, a crime is not an instantaneous action. What goes before a crime is important, and not less important is what follows it. Has the affair been brooded over, or has it been the result of mo