I unclosed my hands from his throat,
and dropped him upon the ground as I would have dropped a loathsome
rag. I watched him rise to his knees, trembling, livid, and
terrified, and then scramble to his feet, with satisfaction that
such a thing as he had not broken my own self-rule.
"Go out of this room," I said, and he hurried to the communicating
door and shut and locked it securely after him.
I heard him do so with a contemptuous smile. Had I wanted to follow
him, my weight flung against the flimsy door would have crushed it
in. And I was left standing there alone in the smoke-filled room
with nothing but the thunderings of my own pulses to break the
silence.
"Inconceivable," I murmured, as the wind, stirring it, made the
tinder creak in the grate as it lay in thick masses; "simply
inconceivable."
I walked to the hearth and bent over the dog. He was already growing
cold. He had not moved after his first fall. That vicious, brutal
stab must have gone straight in to the heart. The knife was wet half
way to the hilt. I lifted the dog and laid him on the sofa, and then
mechanically went towards the blowing night-air and into the
balcony. My brain seemed only just maintaining its right balance.
So: all my labour, all my confident expectations, all the triumphant
pleasure with which I had come back that afternoon, all the result
of this past year's effort were now--nothing.
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