Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/261

 "Oh, if it only were!" The woman followed Valeska hopelessly.

Ten minutes after that Mrs. Burbank sat smiling in the studio. Astro had told her that there would be nothing more to fear from the persecutor who had made the last few weeks hideous. She had herself confessed everything; how, after that first hypnotic sleep, the colonel had given her persistently—so often that it drove her almost distracted—the horrible suggestion that she kill her husband. She had struggled hard against it; but the iteration of the words "Kill him!" so distorted as to be unintelligible to any one else, coming now in letters, now over the telephone, now from the innocent lips of her own child, had finally unstrung her mind; and, for fear lest in her distress she should actually commit the crime, she had run away to get out of the colonel's power.

"When I went away," she concluded, "I thought I had destroyed every evidence that might enable my husband to know how I had been tormented; that is every piece but one, the phonograph cylinder. I was afraid I could not destroy that, and feared to leave it in the house. I took it with me when I went to see Edward, hoping that I should find some place to conceal it. But every one seemed to be watching me, and I was too nervous to risk throwing it away. So when I got to Edward's apartment I left it there in the ash barrel. I had intended to tell him everything and ask his advice, but the poor fellow was so blue that I didn't have the heart to worry him with my own troubles and I left him without saying anything."

She looked curiously at Astro. "I can't imagine how you ever found out. It's wonderful!"