It was
distinct enough and significant enough, heaven knows. But instead of
the explosion of a shell it was the sharp snap of steel against
steel.

The revolver was empty. It was empty-had been empty for weeks. But the
significant fact remained that I had deliberately pulled the trigger.
I had stood ready, in my moment of madness, to kill the man that I
lived with....

Had a ball of lead gone through that man's body, I don't think he
could have staggered back with a more startled expression on his face.
He looked more than bewildered; he looked vaguely humiliated, oddly
and wordlessly affronted, as he stood leaning against the table-edge,
breathing hard, his skin a mottled blue-white to the very lips. He
made an effort to speak, but no sound came from him. For a moment the
dreadful thought raced through me that I had indeed shot him, that in
some mysterious way he was mortally hurt, without this particular
bullet announcing itself as bullets usually do. I looked at the
revolver, stupidly. It seemed to have grown heavy, as heavy as a
cook-stove in my hand.

"You'd do that?" whispered my husband, very slowly, with a stricken
light in his eyes which I couldn't quite understand. I intended to put
the Colt on the table. But something must have been wrong with my
vision, for the loathsome thing fell loathsomely to the floor. I felt
sick and shaken and a horrible misty feeling of homelessness settled
down about me, of a sudden, for I remembered how closely I had skirted
the black gulf of murder.

"Oh, Dinky-Dunk!" I blubbered, weakly, as I groped toward him. He must
have thought that I was going to fall, for he put out his arm and held
me up. He held me up, but there wasn't an atom of warmth in his
embrace. He held me up about the same as he'd hold up an open
wheat-sack that threatened to tumble over on his granary floor. I
don't know what reaction it was that took my strength away from me,
but I clung to his shoulders and sobbed there. I felt as alone in the
gray wastes of time as one of Gershom's lost stars. And I knew that
my Dinky-Dunk would never bend down now and whisper into my ear any
word of comfort, any word of forgiveness. For, however things may have
been at the first, I was the one who was now so hopelessly in the
wrong, _I_ was the big offender. And that knowledge only added to my
misery as I stood there clinging to my husband's shoulders and
blubbering "Oh, Dinky-Dunk!"

It must have grown distasteful to