“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried, as though she were in acute pain. “Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don’t look that way. Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you—here on my arms, and on my back are scars—and it has been more than a year—scars that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it— because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me. That night when the maid brought it to me I sent her downstairs on an errand. Before taking him his drink I went to my little private cabinet and poured into it more than a tea-spoonful of tincture of aconite—enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you open your mouth?” Merriam came back to life. “Florence,” he said earnestly, “I want you. I don’t care what you’ve done. If the world—” “Ralph,” she interrupted, almost with a scream, “be my world!” Her eyes melted; she relaxed magnificently and swayed toward Merriam so suddenly that he had to jump to catch her. Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But it can’t be helped. It’s the subconscious smell of the footlights’ smoke that’s in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook’s soul sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese. Merriam and Mrs. Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy.