I have purposely refrained from reading the papers lately. Chancing to
open one to-day, after a month's complete ignorance of all that had been
happening in the world, I saw the following headline: Suicide of a Lady
in a Lunatic Asylum.
And now I feel as shaken as though I had taken part in a crime; as
though I had had some share in this woman's death.
I am so far to blame that I abandoned her at a moment when it might
still have been possible to save her.... But this is a morbid notion! If
a person wants "to shuffle off this mortal coil" it is nobody's duty to
prevent her.
To me, Agatha Ussing's life or death are secondary matters; it is only
the circumstances that trouble me.
Was she mad, or no? Undoubtedly not more insane than the rest of us, but
her self-control snapped like a bowstring which is overstrained. She
saw--so she said--a grinning death's head behind every smiling face.
Merely a bee in her bonnet! But she was foolish enough to talk about it;
and when people laughed at her words with a good-natured contempt, her
glance became searching and fixed as though she was trying to convince
herself.
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