"Let me think--O God!--let me think," she whispered. "I took
the bottle with me . . . I threw it out of the window of the train
. . . I-- . . . there was another bottle in the cabinet . . .
there were two, side by side--the aconite--and the valerian that I
took when I could not sleep . . . If they found the aconite bottle
full, why--but, he is alive, of course--I gave him only a
harmless dose of valerian . . . I am not a murderess in fact . . .
Ralph, I--O God, don't let this be a dream!"
She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old
Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down her
room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam's photograph
stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a
smile of exquisite tenderness, and--dropped four tears on it. And
Merriam only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes,
looking into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening
door. On her side of the door was the building material for a castle
of Romance--love, an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on
the shore of a haven of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy
ease and security--a life of poetry and heart's ease and refuge.
Romanticist, will you tell me what Mrs.
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