"Stay here, Barker," I said; "I want to see her alone for a moment. I will tell her who I am and that you brought me--if I need to."
He eyed me sharply, but I stepped hastily into the inner room. I touched the shoulder and then the forehead of the kneeling form. It did not move. "Just as I expected," I muttered, and lifting the lifeless body in my arms I laid it gently beside her husband. In one hand she held the vial from which she had taken the last drop of the deadly drug, and clasped in the other her husband's fingers. She had been dead but a few moments, and both she and her husband were robed for the grave.
When I returned to the outer room I found Barker with a note in his hand, and a shocked and horrified look on his face. He glanced up at me through his tears.
"We were too late," he said. "She left this note for me. I found it here on the table. She meant to do it all along, and that is why she was so calm and had no fears for herself."
"I thought so when you told me what she had done," said I.
"Did you? I did not for a moment, or I would have stayed and tried to reason her out of it."
"It is best as it is," said I, "and you could not have reasoned her out of it. It was inevitable--after the rest. Take this certificate too; you will need both."
When all was safely over, as we drove home from the new graves two days later, Barker said: "Is this the solution?"
Presently he said: "To the dead, who cannot suffer, we can be kind and shield them even from themselves. Is there no way to help the living? A few hundred dollars, two short years ago, would have saved all this, and there was no way for her to get it. She knew it _all_ then, and there was no help!"
"Why did she not, in such a case as that, push back her pride and go to some one? There must be thousands who would have gladly responded to such a call as that," I argued.
He buried his face in his hands for a moment and shuddered. At last he said: "She did--she went to three good men, men who had known, been friendly with, admired her and her husband. Two of them are worth their millions, the other one is rich. She only asked to borrow, and promised to repay it herself if she had to live and work after he were dead to do it!"