There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show that Woburn felt sure that her next act would be to return to the table and take up the revolver; but he had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After putting the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, standing a little sideways, so that he could now see her face, which was distinctly pretty, but of a small and unelastic mould, inadequate to the expression of the larger emotions. For some moments she continued to study herself with the expression of a child looking at a playmate who has been scolded; then she turned to the table and lifted the revolver to her forehead.
A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her darting backward to the opposite side of the room. Woburn had broken down the door, and stood torn and breathless in the breach.
"Oh!" she gasped, pressing closer to the wall.
"Don't be frightened," he said; "I saw what you were going to do and I had to stop you."
She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he saw the terrified flutter of her breast; then she said, "No one can stop me for long. And besides, what right have you--"
"Every one has the right to prevent a crime," he returned, the sound of the last word sending the blood to his forehead.
"I deny it," she said passionately. "Every one who has tried to live and failed has the right to die."
"Failed in what?"
"In everything!" she replied. They stood looking at each other in silence.
At length he advanced a few steps.
"You've no right to say you've failed," he said, "while you have breath to try again." He drew the revolver from her hand.
"Try again--try again? I tell you I've tried seventy times seven!"
"What have you tried?"
She looked at him with a certain dignity.
"I don't know," she said, "that you've any right to question me--or to be in this room at all--" and suddenly she burst into tears.
The discrepancy between her words and action struck the chord which, in a man's heart, always responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in her hands, while Woburn watched the course of her weeping.
At last she lifted her head, looking up between drenched lashes.
