en he learned the truth.
She could not--sleep, she had told him, until that surmise was laid.

There were, as she had said, plenty of trains to that unknown destination
of hers, but he thought that that word sleep offered the true clue. She
was a physician's daughter; there must be, somewhere in that house, a
chest or cupboard that would supply what she needed. They'd find her in
her own bed, in that room he had once cast a glance into on his way
up-stairs to Paula.

The conviction grew upon him that she had her plans completely laid; yes,
and her preparations accomplished. That quiet leisureliness of hers would
not have been humanly possible if either her resolution or the means for
executing it had remained in doubt. It was likely that she had whatever
it was--a narcotic, probably; morphine; she wouldn't, conceivably, resort
to any of the corrosives--upon her person at this moment. In that little
silken bag which hung from her wrist.

He clenched the finger-nails into the palms of his hands. This thing was
a nightmare. He had fallen asleep over his table; had only to wake
himself.--It would not do to play with an idea like that. Nor with the
possibility that he had misread her mind. He knew. He was not mistaken.
Let him never glance aside from that.

For one moment he thought wildly of trying to call in help from outside,
of frustrating her design by sheer force. But that could not be done. As
between them, he would be reckoned the madman. Her project might be
deferred by that means, perhaps. It could not be prevented.

It was that terrible self-possession of hers that gave the last turn to
the screw. She could not be dealt with as one frantic, beside herself, to
be wooed and quieted back into a state of sanity. She was at this moment
as sane as he. She was not to be held back, either, by a mere assurance
of his love for her. She had never, it appeared, lacked that assurance.
But her life, warmed even as it was by their love, presented itself to
her somehow as something that it was not possible to go on with.

This was very strange. All of its externals that were visible to him
made up, one would have said, a pattern singularly gracious and
untroubled. Buried in it somewhere there must be some toxic focus that
poisoned everything. He must meet her on her own ground. He must show
her another remedy than the desperate one she was now resolved upon. And
before he could find the remedy he must discover the virus. The