He made no answer to her appeal for a moment, although she clasped his arm more tightly and looked beseechingly into his face. It was one of those moments when he gave way to his best impulses; when he indulged in the pleasure of letting his higher nature vibrate in response to appeals addressed to it, and for the instant tasted the intoxicating pleasure of conscious virtue. He turned to scrutinize her more closely. "But what would you do with it, Helen?" She started a little. She had not been without a half-formed thought that she should be glad to have the deadly gift with its power of swift oblivion in her possession, although until now she had scarcely been conscious of it. But she saw that some suspicion of this was present in Arthur's mind, and must be allayed before she could hope to accomplish her purpose. "You are wrong," she said quickly. "It is for your own sake that I want you to give it up. I will do whatever you like with it. I pledge you my word that I will never use it myself." He still made no movement to surrender the vial, but she held out her hand. "Come," she pleaded. "I appeal to your best self. For the sake of your mother, Arthur,--you have told me you could refuse her nothing she asked, and she would surely ask this if she were alive and knew. Give it to me." He slowly drew from some inner pocket the little morocco case and held it in both hands looking at it. "It is a comfort to me," he said. "It means an end of every thing. It means annihilation; it means getting rid of this nightmare of existence. I can remember when I dreaded the idea of annihilation, but I have come to feel that it is the only good to be desired. To be done with every thing and to forget every thing! Don't you see, Helen; I should never be satisfied with any thing short of omnipotence and omniscience, and annihilation is the only refuge for a nature like that. I want to be everything; to feel the joy of the conqueror and yet not miss the keen, fine pang of the conquered--Lowell says it somewhere; to be 'Both maiden and lover'-- I forget it--'bee and clover, you know; to be the 'red slayer' and 'the slain' both. Do you wonder I want to keep this?" A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness came over Helen. Only half consciously she spoke a thought aloud: "You are half mad from introspection." He turned upon her a quizzical smile. "I dare say," said he. "It isn't a comfortable process either. If a man has lived twenty-five years, Helen, and has not so entangled his life in a web of circumstances that no power will ever be able to extricate it, he may consider his first quarter century of existence a success."