Part 58 (1/2)

The remainder of the letter was a confused and disjointed declaration of love, combined with a penitent entreaty for forgiveness, without any attempt at palliation.

Blotting the tears that had fallen and blurred the words as she wrote, she placed it in an envelope and addressed it with a nervous, shaky hand ”To Hugh.”

”Ah, well,” she murmured, sighing heavily.

Again she opened the davenport, and from under some papers took a little morocco case. Rigid and determined, she rose, more calm than before.

Her lips were thin and white, her teeth tightly clenched, and in her eyes was a fixed, stony look. Walking with firm steps to the door, she locked it, afterwards flinging herself upon a chair beside the small bamboo table in the centre of the room.

Overwhelmed by despair, she had no longer any desire for life.

Insanity, begotten of despondency and fear, prompted with headlong wilfulness, an ardent longing for death.

Opening the case, she extracted from its blue velvet interior a tiny silver hypodermic syringe and a small gla.s.s phial. Examining the latter in the dim light, she saw it was labelled ”Chloral.” This was not the drug she desired. She was in the habit of injecting this for the purpose of soothing her nerves, and knew that it was too weak to produce fatal effect.

Her breath came and went in short uneven gasps, while her half-uncovered breast heaved and fell with the excitement of her temporary madness.

Staggering to her feet, she returned swiftly to the davenport, from which, after a few moments' search, she abstracted a small dark-blue bottle containing morphia, afterwards reseating herself, and, uncorking it, placed it upon the table.

Taking up the syringe, she tried its needle-point with her finger. It p.r.i.c.ked her, and she cast it from her with an exclamation of repugnance.

”_Dieu_!” she gasped hoa.r.s.ely. ”I have no courage. Bah! I am still a coward!”

Yet, as it lay upon the table she fixed her strained eyes upon it, for as an instrument of death it possessed a fatal fascination for her.

Slowly she stretched forth her hand, and again took it between her cold fingers. Then, with a sudden resolve, she filled it to its utmost capacity with the drug from the bottle.

”A certain remedy for mental ailments,” she remarked to herself, smiling bitterly as she held it up contemplatively. ”Who will regret my death or shed a tear? No one. I have no adieux to make--none. As a friendless, sinful wretch, I adopt the preferable mode of speedy death rather than undergo the ordeal of a criminal trial, with its inevitable result. I would live and atone for the past if I could, but that is impossible. Ah! too late, alas! Pierre has forsaken me, and I am alone. Forgiveness! Bah! A mere mockery to set the conscience at rest. What use? I--I can never be forgiven--never!”

While speaking she had, with a feeble, trembling hand, applied the sharp point of the syringe to her bare white arm. Unflinchingly she ran the needle deep into the flesh, and thrice slowly emptied the liquid into the puncture.

She watched the bead of dark blood oozing from the wound when she withdrew the instrument, and quickly covered it with her thumb in order that the injection should be fully absorbed in her veins.

”Ah!” she gasped, in sudden terror a moment later, as the syringe dropped from her nerveless grasp, ”I--I feel so giddy! I can't breathe!

I'm choking! The poison's killing me. Ha, ha, I'm dying!” she laughed hysterically. ”They thought to triumph over me, the vultures! but, after all, I've cheated them. They'll find that Valerie Duvauchel was neither coward nor fool when run to earth!”

Springing to her feet she clutched convulsively at her throat, tearing the flesh with her nails in a horrible paroxysm of pain.

The injection had swiftly accomplished its work.

”Pierre! Pierre!” she articulated with difficulty, in a fierce, hoa.r.s.e whisper, ”where are you? Ah! I see! You--you've returned. Why did you leave me in their merciless clutches when you knew that--that I always--loved you? Kiss me--_mon cher_! Kiss me--darling,--kiss me, Pierre--”

The words choked her.

Blindly she staggered forward a few steps, vainly endeavouring to steady herself.

With a short, shrill scream she wheeled slowly round, as if on a pivot, then tottered, and fell backwards, inert, and lifeless!

A dead, unbroken silence followed. The spirit of Valerie Duvauchel had departed, leaving the body as that of a dishevelled fallen angel.