While speaking she had, with a feeble, trembling hand, applied the sharp point of the syringe to her bare white arm. Unflinchingly she ran the needle deep into the flesh, and thrice slowly emptied the liquid into the puncture.
She watched the bead of dark blood oozing from the wound when she withdrew the instrument, and quickly covered it with her thumb in order that the injection should be fully absorbed in her veins.
“Ah!” she gasped, in sudden terror a moment later, as the syringe dropped from her nerveless grasp, “I—I feel so giddy! I can’t breathe! I’m choking! The poison’s killing me. Ha, ha, I’m dying!” she laughed hysterically. “They thought to triumph over me, the vultures! but, after all, I’ve cheated them. They’ll find that Valérie Duvauchel was neither coward nor fool when run to earth!”
Springing to her feet she clutched convulsively at her throat, tearing the flesh with her nails in a horrible paroxysm of pain.
The injection had swiftly accomplished its work.
“Pierre! Pierre!” she articulated with difficulty, in a fierce, hoarse whisper, “where are you? Ah! I see! You—you’ve returned. Why did you leave me in their merciless clutches when you knew that—that I always—loved you? Kiss me—mon cher! Kiss me—darling,—kiss me, Pierre—”
The words choked her.
Blindly she staggered forward a few steps, vainly endeavouring to steady herself.
With a short, shrill scream she wheeled slowly round, as if on a pivot, then tottered, and fell backwards, inert, and lifeless!
A dead, unbroken silence followed. The spirit of Valérie Duvauchel had departed, leaving the body as that of a dishevelled fallen angel.