The word "POISON" returned to her memory. Quickly there followed the word "arsenic." Arsenic: what did she recall? Suddenly Sally remembered that evening long ago when she had found her mother reading an account of the Seddon trial. What had Seddon done? All the details came crowding to her attention. He had given poison in food ... in food. And Miss ... what was her name? Same as old Perce's-- Barrow. Seddon had given Miss Barrow arsenic. It had made her sick. Sally shuddered. She did not want to be sick. She had had enough of sickness in these past few weeks. To her sickness was the abomination of disease. A terrible shock ran through Sally's body. She lay panting, her heart seeming to throb from her temples to her feet. Miss Barrow had been constantly sick through taking arsenic, and they had only found it out.... Gaga.... Sally's face grew violently hot. She could not breathe. She sat feverishly up in bed, staring wildly. An idea had occurred to her so monstrous that she was stricken with a sense of guilt and self-horror such as she had never known. xviii All that night Sally dwelt with her terrible temptation. The more she shrank from it the more stealthily it returned to her, like the slow fingers of an incoming tide. So many circumstances gave colour to her belief that the poison could be given without discovery that Sally found every detail too easy to conceive. Gaga would be sick again and again, would weaken, would.... Always her imagination refused to complete the story. She covered her face with her hands and sought frantically to hide from this loathsome whisper that pressed temptation upon her. Ill and frightened, she lay turning into every posture of defiance and weakness and irresolution, until the daylight was fully come; and then Gaga's voice called feebly from the next room, and she must rise to tend him with something of the guilt of a murderess oppressing her and causing her during the whole talk to keep her face turned away. But she found in the interview strength enough for the moment to baffle temptation. To know that Gaga lay helpless there before her--hardly moulded into recognisable form by the clinging bedclothes--was a reinforcement to Sally's good will. His position appealed to the pity she felt--the pity and the contempt. He was so thin and weak, so exceedingly fragile, that Sally could not deliberately have hurt him. Instead, she was bent upon his salvation. "Bertram," she said. "We _must_ get away to-day. This morning. D'you see? We _must_." "O-o-oh!" groaned Gaga, in unformulated opposition. "We _must_. We'll go to Penterby this morning." "But my dear!" it was a long wailing cry, like that of an old woman. "We've got to go. _Got_ to go. _I'll_ get _everything_ ready. You shan't have to worry about anything at all."