chère amie!_' I heard her tell her husband to take the brougham; that
she would come home in a cab. However, if my supposition is correct,
I hope she burnt the letter."

"Perhaps that's what she lit the fire for. Did you notice if the
writing materials had been used?"

"No, I didn't notice," said Mike. "And all so elaborately planned!
Just fancy--shooting herself in a nice warm bed! She was determined
to do it effectually. And she must have had the revolver in her
pocket the whole time. I remember now, I had gone out of the room for
a moment, and when I came back she was leaning over the
chimney-piece, looking at something."

"I have often thought," said Harding, "that suicide is the
culminating point of a state of mind long preparing. I think that the
mind of the modern suicide is generally filled, saturated with the
idea. I believe that he or she has been given for a long time
preceding the act to considering, sometimes facetiously, sometimes
sentimentally, the advantages of oblivion. For a long time an
infiltration of desire of oblivion, and acute realization of the
folly of living, precedes suicide, and, when the mind is thoroughly
prepared, a slight shock or interruption in the course of life
produces it, just as an odorous wind, a sight of the sea, results in
the poem which has been collecting in the mind."

"I think you might have the good feeling to forbear," said Frank;
"the present is hardly, I think, a time for epigrams or philosophy. I
wonder how you can talk so...."