rrect.

Linton had written--

"The garlands of her hair are snakes,
Black and bitter are her hating eyes,
A cry the windy death-hall makes,
O, love, deliver us.
The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,
His arm--"

Whereupon his thought fumed over the next two lines, coursing like
greyhounds, after a fugitive vision of a writhening lover with the foam
of poison on his lips dying at the feet of the woman. Linton arose, lit
a cigarette, placed it on the window ledge, took another cigarette,
looked blindly for the matches, thrust a spiral of paper into the flame
of the log fire, lit the second cigarette, placed it toppling on a book
and began a search among his pipes for one that would draw well. He
gazed at his pictures, at the books on the shelves, out at the green
spread of country-side, all without taking mental note. At the window
ledge he came upon the first cigarette, and in a matter of fact way he
returned it to his lips, having forgotten that he had forgotten it.

There was a sound of steps on the stone floor of the quaint little
passage that led down to his study, and turning from the window he saw
that his wife had entered the room and was looking at him strangely.

"Jack," she said in a low voice, "what is the matter?"

His eyes were burning out from under his shock of hair with a fierceness
that belied his feeling of simple surprise. "Nothing is the matter," he
answered. "Why do you ask?"

She seemed immensely concerned, but she was visibly endeavouring to
hide her concern as well as to abate it.

"I--I thought you acted queerly."

He answered: "Why no. I'm not acting queerly. On the contrary," he added
smiling, "I'm in one of my most rational moods."

Her look of alarm did not subside. She continued to regard him with the
same stare. She was silent for a time and did not move. His own thoughts
had quite returned to a contemplation of a poisoned lover, and he did
not note the manner of his wife. Suddenly she came to him, and laying a
hand on his arm said, "Jack, you are ill?"

"Why no, dear," he said with a first impatience, "I'm not ill at all. I
never felt better in my life." And his mind beleaguered by this
pointless talk strove to break through to its old contemplation of the
poisoned lover. "Hear what I have written." Then he read--

"The garlands of her hair are snakes,
Black and bitter are her hating eyes,
A cry the windy death-hall makes,