She came and sat down near him, a beautiful woman, flushed and tender. It arose perhaps from the delicate sensitiveness of both that they had always instinctively avoided those chance contacts which between lovers become so significant, confining themselves to rare hand-shakes at meeting and parting; and it may be that their very scrupulousness in this matter proves how near they had been to more emotional relations than those of simple friendship. Now when Helen laid her hand upon her friend's arm it marked an earnestness which showed how much she felt what she was about to say. "I want you to give me something that Will gave you the other day." Fenton's first feeling was one of annoyance, but this was quickly replaced by a desire to fathom the motives which prompted her request. "How did you know of it?" he asked. "By divination," she answered, with a faint smile. "Will you give it to me?" "Why should I?" "Because I ask you." "To go back to that, then, why do you ask me?" "Because I cannot bear to think of your going to be married with that in your possession. Because it is cruel for you so to wrong Miss Caldwell as to marry her while you find it possible to think it may lead you to--to use that. How can you do it! You know I've no sympathy with those who call it cowardly to take one's life. I think we've a right to do that sometimes, perhaps. But it is cowardly to many a woman with the deliberate idea of escaping her if you are not happy; of deserting her after you have inextricably involved her life in yours. You've no right to do that if you mean to make it a tragedy." "She is involved in my life already," he returned gravely; "and it is a tragedy. But I am not so wholly selfish as you assume. Honestly, Helen, it is for her sake as much, at least, as my own that I wanted that vial. It is all like a scene in _The City of Dreadful Night_. I cannot be sure that I may not have to kill myself for her happiness. Heaven knows I have not found myself so good company as to have very strong reasons to suppose that any body else will." "No," Helen said. "That is sophistry. I am a woman and I have been a wife. I know what I say. You have no right to marry any woman and allow the existence of such a possibility. It may not be logic, but it is true." "But she will not know." "She may not know, but she will feel. You are too finely strung not to discover to a delicate ear any discord, no matter how hard you try to conceal it; and the ear of a woman who loves is sensitive to the slightest changes. No, Arthur, if you have any love for her, any friendship for me, any respect for yourself, give me that vial."