skirt, and tore it down from the waist. She
struck at him for this, then took another from the wardrobe--a still
lighter and gaudier one. They had never yet gone through an hour such
as that which followed. At its expiry, clothes and furniture lay strewn
about the room.

When Louise saw that he was not to be shaken off, that, wherever she
went on this day, he would go, too, she gave up any plan she might have
had, and followed where he led. This was, as swiftly as possible, by
the outlying road to the Connewitz woods. If he could but once get her
there, they would be safe from surprise. Once out there, in solitude,
among the screening trees, something, he did not yet know what, but
something would--must--happen.

He dragged her relentlessly along. But until they got there! His eyes
grew stiff and giddy with looking before him, behind him, on all sides.
And never had she seemed to move so slowly; never had she stared so
brazenly about her, as on this afternoon. With every step they took,
certainty burned higher in him; the thin, fixed smile that disfigured
her lips said: do your worst; do all you can; nothing will save you! He
did not draw a full breath till they were far out on the SCHLEUSSIGER
WEG. Then he dropped her arm, and wiped his face.

The road was heavy with mud, from rains of the preceding day. Louise,
dragging at his side, was careless of it, and let her long skirt trail
behind her. He called her attention to it, furiously, and this was the
first time he had spoken since leaving the house. But she did not even
look down: she picked out a part of the road that was still dirtier,
where her feet sank and stuck.

They crossed the bridge, and joined the wood-path. On one of the first
seats they came to, Louise sank exhausted. Filled with the idea of
getting her into the heart of the woods, he was ahead of her, urging
the pace; and he had taken a further step or two before he saw that she
had remained behind. He was forced to return.

"What are you sitting there for?" He turned on her, with difficulty
resisting the impulse to strike her full in her contemptuous white face.

She laughed--her terrible laugh, which made the very nerves twitch in
his finger-tips. "Why does one usually sit down?"

"ONE?--You're not one! You're you!" Now he wished hundreds of listeners
were in their neighbourhood, that the fierceness of his voice might
carry to them.

"And you're a madman!"

"Yes, treat me like the dirt under