The testimony was damning to Harris, infecting everything he had said. From behind the rail Peacock volleyed and thundered. But truth when you get at it is a stubborn thing. So far as Harris was concerned there it stood and there too, during the production of it, Orr stood, quite like an Angora lapping milk. You could hear him purr. The eyes of Sylvia glistened like mica. Now and again Annandale laughed outright.
It is always insufficient to be innocent of a given charge. You must appear so. Annandale did not. Alternately he was bored and buoyant. But not dejected, never depressed. He did not seem to feel that his life was at stake. That is the attitude of the habitual ruffian. But sentiment was veering. Public opinion is a wave that thinks, thinks again, changes its mind, volatile as a woman. At the opening everybody knew that Annandale was guilty. Now nobody was quite so sure.
The Recorder caressed his beard. “I think,” he announced, “that I will give the jury a recess.”