things differently without knowing why. Rage possessed me, animal
rage. I saw red. I wanted to kill."

He rose and paced the length of the room with great strides.

"I mustn't, Roger. I can't say more. It's impossible."

I was silent. A reaction had come.

CHAPTER XXVI

DRYAD AND SATYR

Little by little the story came from him. Perhaps I urged him but I
think the larger impelling motive to speak was his conscience which
drove him on to confession. He needed another mind, another heart, to
help him bear his burden. And the years had taught him that the
secrets of his lips were mine. I could be as silent, when I chose, as
a mummy. He had not named me old Dry-as-dust for nothing.

It seems that when Jerry left us at the Manor that afternoon and took
to the woods he had no very clear notion of what he was going to do.
All that he knew was that he could not bear the sight or touch or
hearing of his fellow beings, least of all of those of us who were
kind to him. In fact, he had no very clear notion of anything, for his
brain was whirling with terrible grinding, reiterating blows like
machinery that is out of order. What thoughts he had were chaotic,
mere fragments of incidents, and conversations jumbled and mostly
irrelevant. But the vision of the figures in the automobile dominated
all. I am sure that he was mentally unsound and that his actions were
instinctive. He walked furiously, because walk he must, because
violent physical exercise had always been his panacea, and because the
very act of locomotion was an achievement of some sort. After awhile
he found himself running swiftly along the paths that led to the
Sweetwater, and then following the stream through the gorge in the
hills, leaping over the rocks until he reached the wall and the broken
grille. There he paused for a moment and tried to reason with himself.
But he found that he could not think and that his legs still urged him
on. They were bent on carrying him to Briar Hills, he knew that much
now, and that he had no power to stop them. The violence of his
exercise, he said, had cleared the chaos from his brain and only the
vision of the red automobile remained, Marcia's roadster. He knew it
well. Had he not driven it? There was no mistake. It crossed his
disordered brain that red for a machine was a frightful color, a
painful color it seemed to him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought
that before. Red, blood color, the color that seemed to be