"A self-made widow."

Having scratched the surface of O. Henry again after all these years (see Post), I was reading Henry's short story, The World and the Door and came across this aside:

Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But it can't be helped. It's the subconscious smell of the footlights' smoke that's in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook's soul sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese.

They are gossamer strands that link author to author and author to reader across the span of time; from Richard Henry Dana to Edward Bulwer-Lytton to O. Henry to now.

As with all Henry's stories there are little gems scattered about.

"I suppose so," she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; "but that depends upon you. I'll be as honest as you were. I poisoned my husband. I am a self-made widow.