“I deny it,” she said passionately. “Every one who has tried to live and failed has the right to die.”
“Failed in what?”
“In everything!” she replied. They stood looking at each other in silence.
At length he advanced a few steps.
“You’ve no right to say you’ve failed,” he said, “while you have breath to try again.” He drew the revolver from her hand.
“Try again—try again? I tell you I’ve tried seventy times seven!”
“What have you tried?”
She looked at him with a certain dignity.
“I don’t know,” she said, “that you’ve any right to question me—or to be in this room at all—” and suddenly she burst into tears.
The discrepancy between her words and action struck the chord which, in a man’s heart, always responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in her hands, while Woburn watched the course of her weeping.