The end came without a return to consciousness something like half an hour later.
"It is much better that it should have been so," the physician said consolingly. "She very likely would never have recovered her mental faculties, and even had she, the horror of an awakening would have been worse than death. She was too frail of constitution ever to have endured the tortures of prison life."
"But to die like that without a prayer for mercy!" murmured Lynde, shudderingly.
"It would never have been different. If you grieve, my dear boy, you are very foolish. The kindest act God ever performed for her was in allowing her to die."
"Can it be kept from the papers?" asked Lynde, after a long pause.
"I am afraid not. Her last words you alone heard, consequently they rest with you, but the manner of her death must of course be reported, and the papers will naturally want the conclusion of so startling a story. I suspected that it would be something like this, for I believed the act to be that of a lunatic in the beginning. My belief is that she has been insane for years, though that, and the manner of her obtaining the knife with which the deed was done, must forever remain a mystery."
"It is more charitable to believe it so."
"God help her, it is her one chance in eternity. I hope that it may have been so."
Deep in his heart Lynde uttered a solemn "Amen!"
If he could not profoundly regret an occurrence that had rid his life of a contemplation that was more hideous than death, he was not to blame, for he had tried to do his duty nobly, though only he himself could have told what a frightful prospect it contained.