husband. I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So
I suppose that ends our acquaintance."

She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he
stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what
it was all about.

She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes
blazing.

"Don't look at me like that!" she cried, as though she were in acute
pain. "Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don't look that way.
Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you--here on my arms,
and on my back are scars--and it has been more than a year--scars
that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and
struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible
words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every
night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my
endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to
drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made
of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it--
because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me. That night
when the maid brought it to me I sent her downstairs on an errand.
Before taking him his drink I went to my little private cabinet and
poured into it more than a tea-spoonful of tincture of aconite--
enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I
had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the
house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him
stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New
Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast