owing
what I was doing. "I'll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.
You've come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now you
are soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you may
as well know that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you
now. Why are you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been
insulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening
before me. I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer;
but I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult on
someone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on
you and laughed at you. I had been humiliated, so I wanted to
humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power....
That's what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose
to save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that?"

I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in
exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very
well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a
handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully;
but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe. And
all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and her
eyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror. The cynicism, the
cynicism of my words overwhelmed her....

"Save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down
the room before her. "Save you from what? But perhaps I am worse than
you myself. Why didn't you throw it in my teeth when I was giving you
that sermon: 'But what did you come here yourself for? was it to read
us a sermon?' Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I
wanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your
hysteria--that was what I wanted then! Of course, I couldn't keep it
up then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the
devil knows why, gave you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before I
got home, I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I
hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only
like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really
want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want
peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so
long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or a