Each man of us here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness inhabits his bosom.
To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of its fairest flowers.
In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon of approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and taste.
"In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world.
I have not found woman to be so unspiritual or venal.
We must seek elsewhere, among man's baser nature and lower motives for the cause.
"There was, in all probability, a lover's quarrel as they stood at the gate on that memorable day.
Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth vanished from his native haunts.
But had he just cause to do so?
There is no evidence for or against.
But there is something higher than evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman's goodness, in her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face of proffered riches.
"I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about the world.
I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life had to offer him.
Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.
"But what do I see on the other hand?
A lonely woman fading away as the years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a form and listening for a step that will come no more.
She is old now.
Her hair is white and smoothly banded.
Each day she sits at the door and gazes longingly down the dusty road.
In spirit she is waiting there at the gate, just as he left her—his forever, but not here below.
Yes; my belief in woman paints that picture in my mind.
Parted forever on earth, but waiting!
She in anticipation of a meeting in Elysium; he in the Slough of Despond."
"I thought he was in the bughouse," said the passenger who was nobody in particular.
Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently.
The men sat, drooping, in grotesque attitudes.
The wind had abated its violence; coming now in fitful, virulent puffs.
The fire had burned to a mass of red coals which shed but a dim light within the room.
The lady passenger in her cosey nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass of coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead above her clinging boa.
Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.
"And now, Miss Garland," he announced, "we have concluded.
It is for you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument—especially, I may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood—approaches nearest to your own conception."
No answer came from the lady passenger.
Judge Menefee bent over solicitously.
The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low and harshly.
The lady was sleeping sweetly.
The Judge essayed to take her hand to awaken her.
In doing so he touched a small, cold, round, irregular something in her lap.
"She has eaten the apple," announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as he held up the core for them to see.