"Oh, it wouldn't matter," he said carelessly. "She couldn't feel a greater horror of me than she does already. Do you see the mark of Cain on my forehead, Helen?"
"Isn't it droll," she returned, with a smile half pensive, half humorous, "to feel ourselves suddenly tried by new standards and found so wanting. I am not sure but dramatic propriety demands that I should poison Mrs. Fenton. I have that vial, you know."
"Did you notice the inscription on the vial?"
"No; is there one?"
"See for yourself," he answered, refilling his glass.
She rose from the table and brought from a small cabinet the morocco case, unopened since Arthur had given it to her. A certain dread and distaste had prevented her examining it. Now she sat down again in her place, a beautiful woman, with the light falling upon her from above, shining upon her golden hair, and bringing out the hues of her sea-blue dress. Her husband watched her as she held the case a moment in her delicate, firm fingers before unclasping it. He had learned within these last weeks that his old love for Helen had re-awakened; or more truly that a new affection had been born. The knowledge had come to him through thinking upon the relations between Helen and Arthur and in speculating concerning her feeling for Grant Herman, and it had been in his mind when he described love as the desire for the impossible. He had determined to speak his passion, but as he looked at his wife sitting within arm's length yet as remote as if half the world lay between them, he hesitated. Helen unclasped the case and lifted the tiny cut-glass vial from its velvet bed.
"How extravagant you were in your vial," she said, involuntarily lifting it to her nostrils.
"Don't!" Dr. Ashton exclaimed, leaning forward suddenly.
"Is it so deadly as that!" she asked in some dismay, holding it off.
"It is simply pure prussic acid," he replied. "But it might be loosely stopped."