he waters. It beats
like blows upon my skull, and I know that she will never come again."

_Extract from the last letter_:

"I shall address an envelope to you, and leave it among these letters.
Then, should I never come back, some chance wanderer may one day find
and post them to you, and you will know.

"My books and writings remain untouched. We sit together of a
night--this woman I call 'wife' and I--she holding in her hands some
knitted thing that never grows longer by a single stitch, and I with a
volume before me that is ever open at the same page. And day and
night we watch each other stealthily, moving to and fro about the
silent house; and at times, looking round swiftly, I catch the smile
upon her lips before she has time to smooth it away.

"We speak like strangers about this and that, making talk to hide our
thoughts. We make a pretence of busying ourselves about whatever will
help us to keep apart from one another.

"At night, sitting here between the shadows and the dull glow of the
smouldering twigs, I sometimes think I hear the tapping I have learnt
to listen for, and I start from my seat, and softly open the door and
look out. But only the Night stands there. Then I close-to the
latch, and she--the living woman--asks me in her purring voice what
sound I heard, hiding a smile as she stoops low over her work; and I
answer lightly, and, moving towards her, put my arm about her, feeling
her softness and her suppleness, and wondering, supposing I held her
close to me with one arm while pressing her from me with the other,
how long before I should hear the cracking of her bones.

"For here, amid these savage solitudes, I also am grown savage. The
old primeval passions of love and hate stir within me, and they are
fierce and cruel and strong, beyond what you men of the later ages
could understand. The culture of the centuries has fallen from me as
a flimsy garment whirled away by the mountain wind; the old savage
instincts of the race lie bare. One day I shall twine my fingers
about her full white throat, and her eyes will slowly come towards me,
and her lips will part, and the red tongue creep out; and backwards,
step by step, I shall push her before me, gazing the while upon her
bloodless face, and it will be my turn to smile. Backwards through
the open door, backwards along the garden pat