Madame Leota sat glaring at her lawyer. The man was an idiot. That wasn't the sort of question she wanted asked. But now a new witness was in the box. And Madame was horrified to see that he was Ivan Alter.
"You know the defendant?" asked Gould.
"I certainly do."
"Will you tell the court who she is?"
"May I do so in my own way?"
"You may," said Judge Jarrot.
Ivan looked at the ceiling, then he started slowly on one of the most extraordinary stories ever heard in that court room. Nor was there any attempt to stop him when he grew voluble, and the matters of which he spoke might have been considered extraneous.
"This woman," he said, "was born on a farm in Galvey, Illinois. When she was fourteen she eloped with a traveling man whom she adored. He remained with her several nights, then he ruthlessly sold her to a white slaver. From that moment on Mary Blaine ceased to exist and Madame Louella Leota came into being. She decided that she would make men pay for her degradation. She was of a strange, passionate nature. Men could not turn from her. Coldly, methodically, she set out to exploit men. She was in a business not of her own choosing but it must pay her big dividends. I am not going to tell you all the trials and heartaches this girl endured. She went through fire, though somehow her soul could not be destroyed. There was a period when for several years she lived in common law with a man on a farm near Fort Wayne, Indiana. She worked like a drudge, stood the solitude as long as she was able. Then she fled. On the farm she was known as Mary Blaine. Thus her life has been lived as two distinct women, Mary Blaine and Louella Leota. But there is still a third woman, a woman whom she might have been had she not been snatched as a child from all that was decent, and sold into slavery. This woman was good. She had something divine about her. An artist long since dead, Steve Garland, caught a glimpse of her first. I was the second who caught a glimpse of this good woman and as I beheld her I almost thought that I had caught a glimpse of
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