第304章

She fell into thought--thought that only deepened the grave and gentle composure of her face. "Shall I write him a farewell word?" she asked herself. "Shall I tell him the truth before Ileave him forever?"

Her little gold pencil-case hung with the other toys at her watch-chain. After looking about her for a moment, she knelt over her husband and put her hand into the breast-pocket of his coat.

His pocket-book was there. Some papers fell from it as she unfastened the clasp. One of them was the letter which had come to him from Mr. Brock's death-bed. She turned over the two sheets of note-paper on which the rector had written the words that had now come true, and found the last page of the last sheet a blank.

On that page she wrote her farewell words, kneeling at her husband's side.

"I am worse than the worst you can think of me. You have saved Armadale by changing rooms with him to-night; and you have saved him from Me. You can guess now whose widow I should have claimed to be, if you had not preserved his life; and you will know what a wretch you married when you married the woman who writes these lines. Still, I had some innocent moments, and then I loved you dearly. Forget me, my darling, in the love of a better woman than I am. I might, perhaps, have been that better woman myself, if Ihad not lived a miserable life before you met with me. It matters little now. The one atonement I can make for all the wrong I have done you is the atonement of my death. It is not hard for me to die, now I know you will live. Even my wickedness has one merit--it has not prospered. I have never been a happy woman."She folded the letter again, and put it into his hand, to attract his attention in that way when he came to himself. As she gently closed his fingers on the paper and looked up, the last minute of the last interval faced her, recorded on the clock.

She bent over him, and gave him her farewell kiss.

"Live, my angel, live!" she murmured, tenderly, with her lips just touching his. "All your life is before you--a happy life, and an honored life, if you are freed from _me!_"With a last, lingering tenderness, she parted the hair back from his forehead. "It is no merit to have loved you," she said. "You are one of the men whom women all like." She sighed and left him.

It was her last weakness. She bent her head affirmatively to the clock, as if it had been a living creature speaking to her; and fed the funnel for the last time, to the last drop left in the Flask.

The waning moon shone in faintly at the window. With her hand on the door of the room, she turned and looked at the light that was slowly fading out of the murky sky.

"Oh, God, forgive me!" she said. "Oh, Christ, bear witness that Ihave suffered!"

One moment more she lingered on the threshold; lingered for her last look in this world-- and turned that look on _him._"Good-by!" she said, softly.

The door of the room opened, and closed on her. There was an interval of silence.

Then a sound came dull and sudden, like the sound of a fall.

Then there was silence again.

* * * * *

The hands of the clock, following their steady course, reckoned the minutes of the morning as one by one they lapsed away. It was the tenth minute since the door of the room had opened and closed , before Midwinter stirred on his pillow, and, struggling to raise himself, felt the letter in his hand.

At the same moment a key was turned in the staircase door. And the doctor, looking expectantly toward the fatal room, saw the Purple Flask on the window-sill, and the prostrate man trying to raise himself from the floor.

EPILOGUE.