“Well anyway, I’m going to gratify that Curiosity. In a few hours I shall be in an unknown country I have always longed to explore. I’ve an idea I’ll find a happiness there I have never known on this earth.
“In any event, I shall leave some good front page stuff for the newspapers. It ought to make an interesting story: ‘Rich young man, seeking his lost sweetheart in the great city, gives way to despair and kills himself.’ If the girl is found next door, without money to buy food or pay her room rent—”
He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written. Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full, and then lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room....
It was perhaps some twenty minutes before his body began to twitch convulsively.
“Lily May!” he murmured huskily. Then more hoarsely still, “Lily May—forgive—Lily May!”
... His body was writhing and twisting horribly now. His hands were clutching at the air, at his clothing, at the mattress; his legs were contracting and relaxing spasmodically. His face turned purple; he choked and gasped.
“Lily May!” he cried in a stifling whisper, and attempted to lift his arms.
But he could not, and his lips ceased moving and his head fell back, and he lay very still.
SECOND EPISODE.
WHEN the deadly gas fumes reached the youth on the cot he turned over on his back, threw his arms out, and breathed long and deeply of the poisoned air.