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.