Rafael came quietly home, went straight to his room and lighted a candle, even before he took off his overcoat.  As he stood he wrote down a few formulae, then seized a book, sat down astride of a chair, and made a rapid calculation.  Just then Angelika came in, leaned forward towards him, and said in a low voice: 

“You are a nice fellow!  Now I know what you have in hand.  Look there:  your secret thoughts are with that beast.”

“Beast!” he repeated.  His anger at being disturbed, at her having found this particular paper, and now the abuse from her coarse lips of the most delicate creature he had ever known, and, above all, the absolute unexpectedness of the attack, made him lose his head.

“How dare you?  What do you mean?”

“Don’t be a fool.  Do you suppose that I don’t guess that that is meant for the girl who looked after your estate in order to catch you?”

She saw that this hit the mark, so she went still further.

“She, the model of virtue! why, when she was a mere girl, she disgraced herself with an old man.”

As she spoke she was seized by the throat and flung backwards on to the sofa, without the grasp being relaxed.  She was breathless, she saw his face over her; deadly rage was in it.  A strength, a wildness of which she had no conception, gazed upon her in sensual delight at being able to strangle her.

After a wild struggle her arms sank down powerless, her will with them; only her eyes remained wide open, in terror and wonderment.

Dare he?  “Yes, he dare!” Her eyes grew dim, her limbs began to tremble.

“You have taken my apple, I tell you,” was heard in a childish voice from the next room, a soft lisping voice.

It came from the most peaceful innocence in the world!  It saved her!

He rushed out again; but even when the rage had left him which had seized upon him and dominated him as a rider does a horse, he was still not horrified at himself.  His satisfaction at having at length made his power felt was too great for that.

But by degrees there came a revulsion.  Suppose he had killed her, and had to go into penal servitude for the rest of his life for it!  Had such a possibility come into his life?  Might it happen in the future?  No! no! no!  How strange that Angelika should have wounded him!  How frightful her state of mind must be when she could think so odiously of absolutely innocent people; and how angry she must have been to behave in such a way towards him, whom she loved above all others, indeed, as the only one for whom she had to live!

A long, long sum followed:  his faults, her faults, and the faults of others.  He cooled down and began to feel more like himself.

In an hour or two he was fit to go home, to find her on her bed, dissolved in tears, prepared at once to throw her arms round his neck.

He asked pardon a hundred times, with words, kisses, and caresses.