And with a roar he burst into imprecations, blasphemies and obscenities.  It was the string of foul words that, under a sufficient impetus, infallibly comes rolling from the peasant’s tongue—­an explosion as natural as when a thunderbolt scatters a muck-heap at the roadside.

Then, snarling and growling like an animal, he stooped and cuffed her.

“Will!” “Will!” She repeated his name between the blows.  She did not utter a word of complaint, or make an effort to escape.  Brave and unflinching, though almost stunned, she raised her white blood-stained face for him to strike again each time that he buffed it from him.  “Will!” “Will!”

But her courage and submissiveness were driving him mad, had changed suspicion to certainty.  Only guilt could make her take her punishment this way.  Nevertheless she must confess the guilt herself.  Even in his fury, he remembered to hold his hand open and not clench it—­like a cruelly strong animal, tormenting its prey before killing, careful to keep it alive.

“Answer me.  Go on with your tale.”

“Then stop beating me, and I’ll tell you.”

He stayed his hand, poised it, and she seized it and clung to it.

“Will—­as God sees me—­I did it for your sake—­only to help you.  I couldn’t get the help unless I sacrificed myself to save you.”

Wrenching his hand away he knocked her to the ground, and she lay face downward.  But this blow was nothing, purely automatic, like his first blow, not bringing with it that faint sense of something refreshing, the momentary appeasement of his agony.  For in truth the torture that he himself suffered was almost unendurable.  Yet up to now his pain, though so tremendous, was unlocalized; it came from a fusion of all his thoughts, and perhaps each separate thought, when it became clear, would bring more pain than all the thoughts together.

The world had tumbled about his ears; his glorious life had shriveled to nothing; his pride was gone, his love was gone, his trust in man and his belief in man’s creator; and for a few moments one thought grew a little clearer than the rest.  The end of all this must be death—­nothing less.  He was really dead already, and he would not pretend to go on living.  He would finish her, and then finish himself.

Turning his head, he looked at the window; and the open space out there seemed to whisper to him, to beg to him, and to command him.  Yes, that way would be as good as another—­strangle her, pitch her out, and jump out after her.

“Will!” She had once more scrambled to her knees.  “I’ve loved you faithfully.  I’ve never loved any one but you.”

He did not hit her.  Grasping the arm that she was stretching toward him, he dragged her upward, seized her round the body, and carried her to the bed.

“Now we’ll go to work, you and I.”  He had thrown her down on her back, and he held her with both his hands about her throat.  “Now”—­and the sudden pressure of his hands made her gasp and cough—­“we’ll begin at the beginning.”