There was no outlet from his room
except into this. A few steps, force my way in, and what would
follow?
I pressed both hands across my eyes and bowed my head till it leant
hard upon the mantelpiece, feeling the longing and the urging
towards physical violence against him rush upon me and tear me like
wolves. The mental rage diffused itself through all the physical
system till it seemed like poison pouring through my veins. Every
pulse, beating convulsively in arms and chest and neck, seemed to
clamour together in hungry fury. I leant there trying to stifle, to
kill the thoughts that came and beat down the brutal rage. And as I
stood there I heard Howard cough in the next room--that slight
effeminate cough he gave when nervous or confused. I felt my blood
leap at the sound, and it rushed in a scalding stream over my face.
I raised my head and began mechanically to pace the room.
Even now it hardly seemed real, and my eyes kept returning and
returning to the console where the manuscript had always lain out of
work hours through the past year. "Devil! devil!" I muttered at
intervals; "what an unutterable devil." I don't know how long I
walked up and down, but suddenly a sense of physical fatigue, of
collapse, forced itself upon me. I threw myself in the corner of the
couch and took the dog's dead head upon my knee.
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