Chapter I

Anna Clark committed suicide. She did it stupidly, with no striving after effects, no dramatic value. Her death seemed as unfinished as her life. At thirty-five, after ten years of an apparently happy enough marriage, early in the afternoon of a calm, clear day, she swallowed a dose of rather unpleasant poison and died before any one found out about it.

The incompleteness of Anna Clark’s death lay in her own thoughtlessness. She did not leave even one short note to tell of her reasons. There was nothing well-rounded about the affair. One expects at least a note from a suicide. It is little enough, considering the annoyance the whole thing causes. Hurriedly, hysterically written, left on the dresser to be discovered by the first horrified intruder, a note forms the final, definite thing to talk about. Anna Clark never liked to write. She proved her own incompetence, her inadequacy, her love of avoidance of duties, by neglecting note-writing now. No one ever knew why she chose to escape from a continuance of life as it had come to her.