"The first sentence had come naturally, but the last was spoken at random and almost unconsciously. For at the utterance of the word 'poison,' a quickly suppressed cry had escaped the lips of some one behind me, which, while faint enough to elude the attention of any ear less sensitive than my own, contained such an astonishing, if involuntary, note of self-betrayal that my mind grew numb with horror, and I stood staring at the fearful toy which had called up such a revelation of--what? That is what I am here to ask, first of myself, then of you. For the two women pressing behind me were--" "Who?" I sharply demanded, partaking in some indefinable way of his excitement and alarm. "Gilbertine Murray and Dorothy Camerden:"--his prospective bride and the woman I loved and whom he knew I loved, though I had kept my secret quite successfully from every one else! The look we exchanged neither of us will ever forget. "Describe the sound!" I presently said. "I can not," he replied. "I can only give you my impression of it. You, like myself, fought in more than one skirmish in the Cuban War. Did you ever hear the cry made by a wounded man when the cup of cool water for which he has long agonized is brought suddenly before his eyes? Such a sound, with all that goes to make it eloquent, did I hear from one of the two girls who leaned over my shoulder. Can you understand this amazing, this unheard-of circumstance? Can you name the woman, can you name the grief capable of making either of these seemingly happy and innocent girls hail the sight of such a doubtful panacea with an unconscious ebullition of joy? You would clear my wedding-eve of a great dread if you could, for if this expression of concealed misery came from Gilbertine--" "Do you mean," I cried in vehement protest, "that you really are in doubt as to which of these two women uttered the cry which so startled you? That you positively can not tell whether it was Gilbertine or--or--" "I can not; as God lives, I can not. I was too dazed, too confounded by the unexpected circumstance, to turn at once, and when I did, it was to see both pairs of eyes shining, and both faces dimpling with real or affected gaiety. Indeed, if the matter had stopped there, I should have thought myself the victim of some monstrous delusion; but when a half-hour later I found this box missing from the cabinet where I had hastily thrust it at the peremptory summons of our hostess, I knew that I had not misunderstood the nature of the cry I had heard; that it was indeed one of secret longing, and that the hand had simply taken what the heart desired. If a death occurs in this house to-night--"