t they did not sway her. Step
by step, she drew near, and when she reached my side she smiled in my
face once. Then she said: 'Choose aright, dear heart. Leave the
poisoned one for me.'

"Fascinated, I stared at one glass, then at the other. Had either of her
hands trembled, I should have grasped at the glass it held; but not a
tremor shook those icy fingers, nor did her eyes wander to the right
hand or to the left. 'Adelaide!' I shrieked out. 'Toss them behind you.
Let us live--live!' But she only reiterated that awful word: 'Choose!'
and I dare not hesitate longer, lest I lose my chance to save her.
Groping, I touched a glass--I never knew which one--and drawing it from
her fingers, I lifted it to my mouth. Instantly her other hand rose. 'I
don't know which is which, myself,' she said, and drank. That made me
drink, also.

"The two glasses sent out a clicking sound as we set them back on the
stand. Then we waited, looking at each other. 'Which?' her lips seemed
to say. 'Which?' In another moment we knew. 'Your choice was the right
one,' said she, and she sank back into a chair. 'Don't leave me!' she
called out, for I was about to run shrieking out into the night. 'I--I
am happy now that it is all settled; but I do not want to die alone. Oh,
how hot I am!' And leaping up, she flung off her coat, and went gasping
about the room for air. When she sank down again, it was on the lounge;
and again I tried to fly for help, and again she would not let me.
Suddenly she started up, and I saw a great change in her. The heavy,
leaden look was gone; tenderness had come back to her eyes, and a human
anxious expression to her whole face. 'I have been mad!' she cried.
'Carmel, Carmel, what have I done to you, my more than sister--my child,
my child!'

"I tried to soothe her--to keep down my awful fear and soothe her. But
the nearness of death had calmed her poor heart into its old love and
habitual thoughtfulness. She was terrified at my position. She recalled
our mother, and the oath she had taken at that mother's death-bed to
protect me and care for me and my brother. 'And I have failed to do
either,' she cried. 'Arthur, I have alienated, and you I am leaving to
unknown trouble and danger,'

"She was not to be comforted. I saw her life ebbing and could do nothing.
She clung to me while she called up all her powers, and made plans for me
and showed me a way of escape. I was to burn the note, fling two of the
glasses from the wi