I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had brought her out that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the nature of the “book” she had run back to fetch, the reason why she had wanted me to go back by the high-road, and why she had pitied me.  It was all in the instant clear to me.

You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken still—­for a moment standing rigid—­and then again suddenly becoming active with an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an inarticulate cry, with two little shadows mocking my dismay, and about this figure you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit grass, rimmed by the looming suggestion of distant trees—­trees very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed serenity of that wonderful luminous night.

For a little while this realization stunned my mind.  My thoughts came to a pause, staring at my discovery.  Meanwhile my feet and my previous direction carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill station with its little lights, to the ticket-office window, and so to the train.

I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing—­I was alone in one of the dingy “third-class” compartments of that time—­and the sudden nearly frantic insurgence of my rage.  I stood up with the cry of an angry animal, and smote my fist with all my strength against the panel of wood before me. . . .

Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that for a little while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I hung for a time out of the carriage with the door open, contemplating a leap from the train.  It was to be a dramatic leap, and then I would go storming back to her, denounce her, overwhelm her; and I hung, urging myself to do it.  I don’t remember how it was I decided not to do this, at last, but in the end I didn’t.

When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all thoughts of going back.  I was sitting in the corner of the carriage with my bruised and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still insensible to its pain, trying to think out clearly a scheme of action—­action that should express the monstrous indignation that possessed me.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE REVOLVER

Section 1

“That comet is going to hit the earth!”

So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down.

“Ah!” said the other man.

“They do say that it is made of gas, that comet.  We sha’n’t blow up, shall us?”. . .

What did it matter to me?

I was thinking of revenge—­revenge against the primary conditions of my being.  I was thinking of Nettie and her lover.  I was firmly resolved he should not have her—­though I had to kill them both to prevent it.  I did not care what else might happen, if only that end was ensured.  All my thwarted passions had turned to rage.  I would have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought, to be certain of revenge.  A hundred possibilities of action, a hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one another through my shamed, exasperated mind.  The sole prospect I could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of my humiliated self.