ull ensued: for a few days they
had even caught a glimpse again of the old happiness. But the pause was
short-lived: it was like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into
water, which continue just so long as the impetus lasts. Louise had
been a little awed by his greater strength, when she had lain cowering
on the ground before him. But not many days elapsed before her eyes
were wide open with incredulous amazement. When she understood, as she
soon did, that her shameless admission, and still more, his punishment
of her for it, was not to be followed up by any new development; that,
in place of subduing her mentally as well, he was going to be content
to live on as they had been doing; that, in fact, he had already
dropped back into the old state of things, before she was well aware of
what was happening: then her passing mood of submission swept over into
her old flamboyant contempt for him. The fact of his having beaten her
became a weapon in her hands; and she used it unsparingly. To her
taunts, he had no answer to make. For, the madness once passed, he
could not conceive how he had been capable of such a thing; in his sane
moments of dejection and self-distrust, he could not have raised his
hand against her, though his life were at stake.

He had never been able to drag from her a single one of the reasons
that had led to her mad betrayal of him. On this point she was
inflexible. In the course of that long night which he had spent on his
knees by her bed, he had persecuted her to disclose her motive. But he
might as well have spoken to the wind; his questioning elicited no
reply.. Again and again, he had upbraided her: "But you didn't care for
Heinz! He was nothing to you!" and she neither assented nor gainsaid
him. Once, however, she had broken in on him: "You believed bad of me
long before there was any to believe. Now you have something to go on!"
And still again, when the sluggish dawn was creeping in, she had
suddenly turned her head: "But now you can go away. You're free to
leave me. Nothing binds you to a woman like me--who can't be content
with one man." Dizzy with fatigue, he had answered: "No--if you think
that--if you did it just to be rid of me--you're mistaken!"

From this night on, they had never reverted to the subject again--which
is not to say that his brain did not work furiously at it; the search
for a clue, for the hidden motive, was now his eternal occupation. But
to her he was silent, sheerly