Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/118

 aggressive attitude, with her clenched hands outstretched at the group of magistrates, she screamed:

"You're no better than butchers … you have no right to torture a woman like this.… Oh, how horrible! To accuse me … to arrest me … for nothing!… Oh, it's abominable!… What butchers you all are!… And it's you in particular," addressing Perenna, "it's you—yes, I know—it's you who are the enemy.

"Oh, I understand! You had your reasons, you were here last night.… Then why don't they arrest you? Why not you, as you were here and I was not and know nothing, absolutely nothing of what happened.… Why isn't it you?"

The last words were pronounced in a hardly intelligible fashion. She had no strength left. She had to sit down, with her head bent over her knees, and she wept once more, abundantly.

Perenna went up to her and, raising her forehead and uncovering the tear-stained face, said:

"The imprints of teeth in both apples are absolutely identical. There is therefore no doubt whatever but that the first comes from you as well as the second."

"No!" she said.

"Yes," he affirmed. "That is a fact which it is materially impossible to deny. But the first impression may have been left by you before last night, that is to say, you may have bitten that apple yesterday, for instance"

She stammered:

"Do you think so? Yes, perhaps, I seem to remember—yesterday morning"