Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/130

 known by men of social standing, and without protest, is past belief.

Speaking after this discovery, Attorney Delmas was confident of the acquittal of Thaw.

"Before we put Evelyn on the stand," he said, "I heard her story but once. There was no rehearsal no attempt at dramatic play."

"The story as she told it in court was not half as dramatic as it was when she told it to me during our preparation of the case.

"Only once in my life have I been so touched with emotion as I was when Evelyn Nesbit first told me her story. That was at the burial of my father.

"As I sat there as a lawyer listening to the girl narrating the story of what she had suffered at the hands of Stanford White, the tears welled into my eyes and I fairly sobbed.

"She told me then that when she awoke and found Stanford White was alone with her in that mirrored bedroom he seemed to her like a big gorilla.

"His hair was disheveled, and the look in his face was like an animal. 'I screamed with terror,' she told me. She added many details, which, if she had told the jury, there would have been no need on her part to produce further evidence—as we had not rehearsed our part, I depended simply on her memory as to facts. The presence of the crowded courtroom disconcerted her to the extent that she omitted some of the most revolting features of that fatal night."