She paused and clasped her hands as though in an agony of recollection. Was she telling the truth—or was she really a great actress who had just found herself?
"I tried to run between them—I pleaded—my name—my honor—everything. They would not listen."
She stopped just long enough to allow our own now supersensitive minds to reconstruct the scene already described by Shattuck between the two men.
"But I managed to get between them and the glasses on the desk. I held the bottle, in one hand behind me—so."
She acted it out, placing herself between us and a table, her face toward us, but her hand holding an imaginary bottle behind her. It was real to her, at least.
"Which would I save?"
She paused in desperation as she reconstructed the scene. Almost she had me convinced already, as she played out the part, under the stress of her feelings.
"Which? My husband—or the other man whom I—I—"
She let her voice die away over the implied word "loved" and there was another tense moment of silence.
"There was not enough for both," she added, quickly; then, as though sweeping us on to the finale: "I poured the few drops of belladonna into the glass nearest me. Vance—Mr. Shattuck, drank it!"