preserve thoughts from pollution by strangers. If I'd been content
to do nothing, if I'd not been jealous, I'd have got into vicious
company, and I didn't want to do that. That's why she had to die so
that my thoughts might be cleansed of deadly sin, which alone is to
be condemned. I've finished.

PEOPLE. The dead woman's guilty! Her blood's on her own head.

MAGISTRATE. She's guilty, for she was the cause of the crime.

(The FATHER of the dead woman steps forward.)

FATHER. Your Worship, judge of my dead child; and you, countrymen,
let me speak!

MAGISTRATE. The dead girl's father may speak.

FATHER. You're accusing a dead girl; and I shall answer. Maria, my
child, has undoubtedly been guilty of a crime and is to blame for
the misdeeds of this man. There's no doubt of it!

PEOPLE. No doubt! It's she who's guilty!

FATHER. Permit her father to add a word of explanation, if not of
defence. (Pause.) When she was fifteen, Maria fell into the hands
of a man who seemed to have made it his business to entrap young
girls, much as a bird-catcher traps small birds. He was no seducer,
in the ordinary sense, for he contented himself with binding her
senses and entangling her feelings only to thrust her away and
watch how she suffered with torn wings and a broken heart--tortured