view... the moaning of a wounded, suffer-ing woman...

What connection has this mourning lady with that criminal condemned to death by hanging?.. This elegant, aristocratic lady is Temple Drake, wife of Gowan Stevens, heir of one of the Virginia families of ancient lineage and wealth. She is the mother of the murdered child... Is she then mourning her child?... Yes and no... She mourns her child, but at the same time she hides in the depths of her soul a secret connected with Nancy Manigoe's crime that did not come out at the trial. Nancy kept the secret, and Temple did not dare divulge it; and here she is in a violent struggle with herself that all but tears her apart: shall she leave Nancy to die on the gallows like an expiatory victim, knowing that what Nancy did was done out of love for her mistress? A fierce question looms before her, burning her and robbing her of her rest: "Who is the criminal? Nancy, or I?" She flees from answering this question and flies to California, far from the crime and its victims... Here she is on the merciful shore, far away and safe, and here is her child playing on the sands beside her, contented and happy. She sacrifices everything, even

truth and her conscience, to guard this child with the grace of innocence, of peace of mind, and of sweet, guiltless sleep.

But it is this innocent childhood that asks: — Is tomorrow the day of Nancy's hanging, Mama? — Yes, my darling. — And after the hanging, where do we go? — Where do we go?.. Where do we go?..

Here is Temple before the Governor of the State in Jackson at two o'clock in the morning, confessing. She is like a pent-up volcano that has found an outlet and erupted with the burning, destructive elements in its depths, beautiful and terrifying at once. And here is Temple's soul, so lofty in its pride, transpar-ent and naked before the Governor, the lawyer, and her husband, laying bare the tragedy of their two lives, and naming the evil rooted in the depths of her soul — that evil which drove her, at seventeen years of age, to become entangled in a love adventure, run away from her school, and gratify her unbridled lust for three months in one of the secret houses of the city of Memphis... She returns to life once more; her wealthy father and brothers take her in; she marries the aristocratic young Gowan Stevens and settles with him in her elegant social world in Virginia,