I refuse to answer."
Jim Dyckman rose from his chair in a frenzy of wrath. His lawyer,
McNiven, pressed him back and pleaded with him in a whisper to
remember the court. He yielded helplessly, cursing himself for
his disgraceful lack of chivalry.
The judge spoke sternly. "Witness will answer questions of counsel
or--"
"But, your Honor, he is trying to make me say that I--Oh, it's
loathsome. I didn't. I didn't. He has no right!"
When a woman's hair is caught in a traveling belt and she is drawn
backward, screaming, into the wheels of a great machinery that will
mangle her beauty if it does not helplessly murder her there are not
many people whose hearts are hard enough to withhold pity until they
learn whether or not her plight was due to carelessness.
There are always a few, however, who will add their blame to her
burden, and they usually invoke the name of justice for their
lethargy of spirit.
Yet even the cruelty of that severity is a form of self-protection
against a shattering grief; and a perfect heart would have pity even
for the pitiless, since they, too, are the victims of their own
carelessness; they, too, are drawn backward into the soul-crushing
cogs of the world.
Mrs. Charity Coe Cheever, as good a woman as ever was, was being
dragged to the meeting-point of great wheels, but she had turned
about and was fighting to escape, at least with what was dearer
than her life. The pain and the terror were supreme, and even if
she wrenched free from destruction it would be at the cost of
lasting scars.
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