the sake of
Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go.' I looked at this awhile
in mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness and horror of
life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and I began to
shake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my life
unmanned me like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not my
happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could not lose her. I
said so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a dream, I moved
to the window, put forth my hand to open the casement, and thrust it
through the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist; and with an
instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb on the
little leaping fountain, and reflected what to do. In that empty room
there was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required
assistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be
my helper, and I turned and went down stairs, still keeping my thumb upon
the wound.

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to
the recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing
close before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.

'Pardon me,' said I, 'if I disturb you, but I must apply to you for
help.'

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very words
I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils and
seemed to come suddenly and fully alive.

'I have cut myself,' I said, 'and rather badly. See!' And I held out my
two hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping.

Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemed
to fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yet
inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her
disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the
hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten me
to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and the
monstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I beat
her back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries, cries
that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of the high
wind. Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbing
with the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the abhorrent
strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already force