You can take your choice," and with a glare of hate she rushed from the room.
On a table near the fireplace stood spirits.

The maddened husband went to them, filled a tumbler half full with brandy, added a little water and drank it off.
He poured more brandy into the glass and began to think.

To Barbara his mind was as an open book and she read what was passing there.

What she saw were such thoughts as these: "My only comfort, and yet till within two years ago, whatever else I did, I never touched drink.

I swore to my mother that I never would, and had she been alive to-day----.