Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/113

Rh really believe you would be glad if Babs didn't get better."

"And why not?" I whispered. "I want you, Estelle darling—only you!"

She shivered and drew away from me as she answered: "You will make me hate you, if you talk like that. How can you?" And she went to the sick-room without another word or look.

Well, I have to tell you now I've begun. My wife had to have three minor operations done for the poisoned arm and then began to improve, but slowly, and at the end of a month's illness she was just a shadow of herself, fragile to a degree, in just that condition which only required the smallest "fillip" to turn things the wrong way, and—well—it had to be done.

I wanted Estelle madly, frantically, and while my wife was alive this was impossible, so that night I added enough arsenic to a dose of her medicine to produce a sickness which I felt the invalid would not be likely to stand, and which is a common symptom in such cases as hers.

I felt a bit uncomfortable as I saw the thin, pallid-faced, golden-haired little woman lying in the bed.