"I must kill him," he hissed, and opening his hand strode away down the
road.
The delicate attentions of his adoring sister had secured for the
general perfect liberty of movement in the house where he was a guest.
He had even his own entrance through a small door in one corner of
the orangery. Thus he was not exposed that evening to the necessity
of dissembling his agitation before the calm ignorance of the other
inmates. He was glad of it. It seemed to him that if he had to open
his lips, he would break out into horrible imprecation, start breaking
furniture, smashing china and glasses. From the moment he opened the
private door, and while ascending the twenty-eight steps of winding
staircase, giving access to the corridor on which his room opened, he
went through a horrible and humiliating scene in which an infuriated
madman, with bloodshot eyes and a foaming mouth, played inconceivable
havoc with everything inanimate that may be found in a well-appointed
dining room. When he opened the door of his apartment the fit was over,
and his bodily fatigue was so great that he had to catch at the backs
of the chairs as he crossed the room to reach a low and broad divan
on which he let himself fall heavily. His moral prostration was still
greater. That brutality of feeling, which he had known only when
charging sabre in hand, amazed this man of forty, who did not recognise
in it the instinctive fury of his menaced passion.
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