fort that it cost me.'

"Well, I have discovered it now. I know that you privately think your
life with me 'a purgatory.' I know that you have compassionately hidden
from me the 'sense of shrinking that comes over you when you are obliged
to submit to my caresses.' I am nothing but an obstacle--an 'utterly
distasteful' obstacle--between you and the woman whom you love so dearly
that you 'adore the earth which she touches with her foot.' Be it so! I
will stand in your way no longer. It is no sacrifice and no merit on
my part. Life is unendurable to me, now I know that the man whom I love
with all my heart and soul secretly shrinks from me whenever I touch
him.

"I have got the means of death close at hand.

"The arsenic that I twice asked you to buy for me is in my
dressing-case. I deceived you when I mentioned some commonplace domestic
reasons for wanting it. My true reason was to try if I could not improve
my ugly complexion--not from any vain feeling of mine: only to make
myself look better and more lovable in your eyes. I have taken some of
it for that purpose; but I have got plenty left to kill myself with.
The poison will have its use at last. It might have failed to improve my
complexion--it will not fail to relieve you of your ugly wife.

"Don't let me be examined after death. Show this letter to the doctor
who attends me. It will tell him that I have committed suicide; it will
prevent any innocent persons from being suspected of poisoning me.
I want nobody to be blamed or punished. I shall remove the chemist's
label, and carefully empty the bottle containing the poison, so that he
may not suffer on my account.

"I must wait here, and rest a little while--then take up my letter
again. It is far too long already. But these are my farewell words. I
may surely dwell a little on my last talk with you!

"October 21. Two o'clock in the morning.

"I sent you out of the room yesterday when you came in to ask how I had
passed the night. And I spoke of you shamefully, Eustace, after you
had gone, to the hired nurse who attends on me. Forgive me. I am almost
beside myself now. You know why.

"Half-past three.

"Oh, my husband, I have done the deed which will relieve you of the wife
whom you hate! I have taken the poison--all of it that was left in the
paper packet, which was the first that I found. If this is not enough to
kill me, I have more left in the bottle.

"Ten minutes past five.

"You have just gone,