Howard struggled breathless, white as death, to his feet. For one
second I stood transfixed, watching him with blazing eyes. Then one
step forward and I was upon him. My two hands closed like steel
round his throat, and by his head, thus, I dragged him from the
hearth out into the centre of the room.
"You unutterable, unspeakable cur and devil!" I muttered, and I saw
his face blackening under my grip.
A gust of wind passed through the room, blowing to the door with a
bang, and it whirled aloft, round us, broken and quivering pieces of
black tinder. The air was full of them. And the dead dog lay in a
pool of blood before us. It seemed to me that my brain was rocking
with the fury and rage I felt--my whole frame convulsed in it. The
loss, the irreparable loss, the killed hopes I saw in those floating
ashes round me, came home to me till my brain seemed breaking
asunder with anger. To murder him came the impulse! How? There were
a thousand ways! To grind my fingers still deeper into his throat--
THUS! THUS! Or that long knife that lay there on the rug, driven
into and twisted round in his breast; or that sharp corner of the
fender to batter out his brains; or drag him through the long, open
window and hurl him in the darkness from that second floor balcony.
Which? Devil! devil! Then as I held him there the thought pierced
me,--Was I a brute to feel a blind rage like this? Had I ever in my
life lost my own self-command, that command which sets us where we
stand as men, as sane, highly-organised beings? And should a
miserable, worthless cur like this have the power to break that
self-control?
My whole pride and self-respect rose within me and commanded my
passion back within its bounds.
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