Among them heads were quietly bared as the
old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would
have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing
currents of thought and life.
Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went
back himself to wait for the verdict.
As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been
held, Coryston emerged.
Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been
the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely.
Newbury began:
"Will you take a message from me to your sister?"
A man opened the door in front a little way.
"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back."
The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the
conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many
forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury
beside him.
"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!"
Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his
face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression.
"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to
discuss our differences, Coryston--"
"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white.
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