"Muriel!" he whispered.
"I've read of such things in the papers," she said.
"Muriel!"
His eyes were so horrified that she hung her head.
"Oh, it's wrong; I know it's wrong," she said. "But, oh, if you knew how afraid I was of this and how I hate and how—O, Jim, Jim!"
She tottered forward, and his arms received her.
"Muriel, my dear wife," he said. "My own dear little girl, to think that when God has put a life into our keeping, you——Why, Muriel, that is murder!"
That word won Stainton's victory. Muriel succumbed. For her it was like the safe passing of one of those physical crises when the patient had rather die than face the pain of further living; for him it was the sealing of his happiness.