If now he had a different, perhaps deeper, sense of responsibility, he
had known nothing of it in the first months of his contact with her....
A different man, he reiterated; and one as faithfully representative as
he was to-day. But totally another; men changed, evolved, progressed.
Jasper Penny was convinced that it was a progression; but in a broad
manner beyond all hope of his comprehension, and entirely outside
dogmatic good and evil. The germ of it must have been in him from the
first; his burning necessity for Susan, he told himself, had been born
in him, laid dormant until, yes--it had been stirred into activity by
Essie Scofield, by the revulsion which had followed that natural
development.
He was suddenly conscious that Al Schimpf had ceased domineering Essie.
The lawyer swung about, facing them with an expression of commonplace
satisfaction. "It's all in fine order," he declared. "I want, if
possible, to study our jury through a preliminary case or so. We shall,
of course, surrender our client at once, without making any difficulty
about moving her from one police district to another. I can produce a
witness to the fact that this Culser openly said that he expected
shortly to come into more money. And he had dishonoured debts all about.
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