"I reached out my hand; heaven and earth seemed to stand still; red lights danced before my eyes; I drew out the drawer.
"'Quick, quick, the powder!' he moaned; 'fetch it!'
"I was staring at him, but my hand groped in the drawer. I felt a little packet of powder; I took it and crossed the room. As soon as I was near him he stretched out his hand and grasped it. I saw him empty it into his mouth; at the same instant his eyes fixed themselves in horror on the drawer I had left open behind me, the drawer in which the poison was kept.
"'Curse you for a——' He never said what. With this broken imprecation upon his lips, he sank back upon the floor, dead."
XXV.
EDGAR AND FRANK.
Frank, who had been reading these words as if swept along by a torrent, started to his feet with a hoarse cry, as he reached this point. He could not believe his eyes, he could not believe his understanding. He shrank from the paper that contained the deadly revelation, as though a snake had suddenly uncoiled itself from amid the sheets. With hair slowly rising on his forehead, he stared and stared, hoping wildly, hoping against hope, to see other words start from the sheet, and blot out of existence the ones that had in an instant made his love a horror, his life a desert.
But no, Heaven works no such miracle, even in sight of such an agony as his; and the words met his gaze relentlessly till his misery was more than he could endure, and he rushed from the room like a madman.
Edgar, who was busy over some medical treatise, rose rapidly as he heard the unsteady footsteps of his friend.
"What is the matter?" he cried, as Frank came stumbling into his presence. "You look——"