"You know,"—in a scared whisper. "Because I got him the poison——"
"Come, come now! Let us have no more of that. I was hoping a good night's rest would have ridded you of that bad dream."
"Dream?" and she looked up at him wildly. "Ah, if I could only believe it was a dream!" and she shook her head forlornly.
"Why, of course it was a dream. You were over-wrought with it all, and your mind took the bit in its teeth and ran away with you. What you've got to do now is to try to forget all about it."
"Forget!"
"How I came to make such a mistake I cannot imagine, but when I got home I saw at once that there was an extra dose gone out of my strychnine bottle instead of out of the distilled water, and that explained it at once."
"You? ... You made the mistake?" she looked up at him again, eagerly, with warped face and knitted brows, and a wavering flutter of hope in her eyes.... "You are only saying it to comfort me."
"I'm trying to show you how foolish it is to allow yourself to be ridden by this strange notion you've got into your head."
"Strange notion? ... Did he not beg me to get him that stuff he used for the rats? And did I not get it for him? And he took it. And then——" she shivered at the remembrance of what followed when her husband took the draught.
"All in that horrible dream when your mind was running away with you——"