Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/84

 had untied the knot of that packet, and something more.

"I took leave of her abruptly; she sprang into her carriage and drove off.

"The drop of blood had disappeared, the pain was not manifested by any external symptom; and yet the spot marked by the drop burned me as if it had been bitten by a corrosive poison. This pain grows from hour to hour. I sleep sometimes, but I never cease to be conscious of my suffering. I do not complain to anybody: nobody, indeed, would believe my story. You have seen the violence of my torment, and you know how much the two operations have relieved me; but concurrently with the healing of the wound, the pain returns. It has now attacked me for the third time, and I have no longer strength to resist it. In an hour I shall be dead. One thought consoles me; it is that she has avenged herself here below. She will perhaps forgive me above. I thank you for all you have done for me. May heaven reward you."

A few days later one might have read in the newspapers that S, one of the richest landowners, had blown out his brains. Some attributed his suicide to sorrow caused by the death of his wife; others, better informed, to an incurable wound. Those who best knew him said that he had been attacked by monomania, that his incurable wound existed only in his imagination.