“You and John are not going to live here?”

“John may live here, but I shall not.”

“You are going to leave him?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

She paused a long time, and said at last:

“Perhaps—because I want to be—free!”

And, as she spoke, I had a sudden vision of broad spaces, virgin tracts of forests, untrodden lands—and a realization of what freedom would mean to such a nature as Mary Cavendish. I seemed to see her for a moment as she was, a proud wild creature, as untamed by civilization as some


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Then came the sensation of the day. The Coroner called Albert Mace, chemist’s assistant.

It was our agitated young man of the pale face. In answer to the Coroner’s questions, he explained that he was a qualified pharmacist, but had only recently come to this particular shop, as the assistant formerly there had just been called up for the army.


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