For a moment it seemed as if Quintard had not understood. He put out his hand as if to ward off a blow, and looked at her almost inquiringly. “What did you say?” he muttered. “I tried to believe that I loved him, and failed. There is no excuse. I knew I did not. I tell you this because I love you too well to give you what you would have spurned had you known; and I tell you that you may forget me the sooner.” Quintard understood. He crossed the short distance between them and looked into her face. Hermia gave a rapturous cry. All that was brutal and savage in her nature surged upward in response to the murderous passion in this man who was bone of herself. Never had she been so at one with him; never had she so worshiped him as in that moment when she thought he was going to kill her. Then, like a flash, he left her. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXIX. THE REALIZATION OF IDEALS. She stood motionless for a few moments, then went up-stairs. As she crossed the hall she saw that the front-door was open, but she was too listless to close it. She went to her boudoir and sank into a chair. In the next room was a bottle of potassium cyanide which she had brought up from the butler’s pantry. It had been purchased to scour John Suydam’s silver, which had the rust of generations on it. She would get it in a few moments. She had a fancy to review her life before she ended it. All those years before the last two—had they ever really existed? Had there been a time when life had been before her? when circumstances had not combined to push her steadily to her destruction? No temptations had come to the plain, unattractive girl in the little Brooklyn flat. Though every desire had been ungratified, still her life had been unspoiled, and she had possessed a realm in which she had found perfect joy. Was it possible that she and that girl were the same? She was twenty years older and her life was over; that girl’s had not then begun. If she could be back in that past for a few moments! If, for a little time, she could blot out the present before she went into the future! She lifted her head. In a drawer of her wardrobe was an old brown-serge dress. She had kept it to look at occasionally, and with it assure, and reassure, herself that the present was not a dream. She had a fancy to look for a moment as she had looked in those days when all things were yet to be.