The Argosy — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THREE THEORIES OF A CRIME, 219 trembled so that I could not write. I cast several unfinished letters into the waste basket before I at last succeeded in framing one intelligently. I promised that I would call upon her the following evening. It was the cruel hand of fate that guided me there that night. ‘The old discussion was renewed. I begged and prayed with her to go back to John, but she remained perversely obdurate. Early in the night I tried to leave but she insisted upon my acceptance of a cup of tea. I could not refuse. She brewed it herself, and as she moved about I observed that, beautiful as she had been as a girl, she was-a thousand fold more lovely as a woman grown. But beautiful as she was, she was still John’s wife to me, and here upon my solemn oath, with God above me, I declare that not a thought of evil occupied my mind. ‘‘ Just as she placed the tea before me she said : “““Henry, I cannot believe that you have ceased to love me. It cannot be that the heart in which I innocently caused so much of suffering, has now no room for one who loves you so madly. Father was in debt and penniless, I never received your letter, and when I met you and you evaded ime so strangely, I thought that you had ceased to love me. Henry! Henry !’ she cried throwing herself wildly upon me, ‘I cannot live without you. I would rather send a bullet through my heart than go back again to live with John !’ ~ Tattempted to put her from me, and began all the old arguments over again. She interrupted me with a sudden change of expression, and with a light laugh, gay but hysterical, invited me to partake of her tea. Forsome moments we remained silent. She watched me furtively, it seemed to me, while I drank. I soon experienced a strange feeling in my head and fought against it by rising and getting ready to depart. What happened after that I cannot tell, for I was only conscious of a dark cloud obscuring my sight, a dizziness in my head, a trembling sensation in my knees, and the conscious- ness of falling, falling, falling, until it seemed that I would never*reach the floor.’’ —— ——-___ CHAPTER X.—TuHE Fina, Act. WHEN the first normal sensations began to appear in my mind again, I seemed to recall a dream away back somewhere in the past. It seemed to me that hours before and deep in the silence of the night, I had opened my heavy eyelids, and had seen John stealthily passing out through the door and closing it softly behind him. It may have been really a dream, or it may have been only a faint momentary flitting of semi consciousness, but the idea, reality, vision, or whatever it may have been, was with me when I awoke, hovering like a phantom in my fevered mind. ‘Gradually I began to recall my drugged sensibilities. My left hand felt strangely stiff. I raised it in the dim light of the one gas jet, still burn- ing inthe room. Horrors! It was covered with blood! Not till that in- stant had I realized fully where I was. I gained my feet, and my heart stopped beating as my affrighted gaze fell upon the scene before me. Lydia CoOTRmiclaoolK< (S@)