"
The voice of the girl rang clear. There was a note of insistence
that carried a curious dignity of its own. The very simplicity
of her statement might have had a power to convince one who
listened without prejudice, although the words themselves were of
the trite sort that any protesting criminal might utter.
"I tell you, I didn't do it!"
Gilder himself felt the surge of emotion that swung through these
moments, but he would not yield to it. With his lack of
imagination, he could not interpret what this time must mean to
the girl before him. Rather, he merely deemed it his duty to
carry through this unfortunate affair with a scrupulous attention
to detail, in the fashion that had always been characteristic of
him during the years in which he had steadily mounted from the
bottom to the top.
"What's the use of all this pretense?" he demanded, sharply.
"You were given a fair trial, and there's an end of it."
The girl, standing there so feebly, seeming indeed to cling for
support to the man who always held her thus closely by the wrist,
spoke again with an astonishing clearness, even with a sort of
vivacity, as if she explained easily something otherwise in
doubt.
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