keeping her
hold on him by the two lapels of his damp coat. "Save me. Hide me.
Don't let them have me. You must kill me first. I couldn't do it
myself--I couldn't, I couldn't--not even for what I am afraid of."

She was confoundedly bizarre, he thought. She was beginning to inspire
him with an indefinite uneasiness. He said surlily, for he was busy with
important thoughts:

"What the devil _are_ you afraid of?"

"Haven't you guessed what I was driven to do!" cried the woman.
Distracted by the vividness of her dreadful apprehensions, her head
ringing with forceful words, that kept the horror of her position before
her mind, she had imagined her incoherence to be clearness itself. She
had no conscience of how little she had audibly said in the disjointed
phrases completed only in her thought. She had felt the relief of a full
confession, and she gave a special meaning to every sentence spoken by
Comrade Ossipon, whose knowledge did not in the least resemble her own.
"Haven't you guessed what I was driven to do!" Her voice fell. "You
needn't be long in guessing then what I am afraid of," she continued, in
a bitter and sombre murmur. "I won't have it. I won't. I won't. I
won't. You must promise to kill me first!" She shook the lapels of his
coat. "It must never be!"

He assured her curtly that no promises on his part were necessary, but he
took good care not to contradict her in set terms, because he had had
much to do with excited women, and he was inclined in general to let his
experience guide his conduct in preference to applying his sagacity to
each special case. His sagacity in this case was busy in other
directions. Women's words fell into water, but the shortcomings of
time-tables remained. The insular nature of Great Britain obtruded
itself upon his notice in an odious form. "Might just as well be put
under lock and key every night," he thought irritably, as nonplussed as
though he had a wall to scale with the woman on his back. Suddenly he
slapped his forehead. He had by dint of cudgelling his brains just
thought of the Southampton--St Malo service. The boat left about
midnight. There was a train at 10.30. He became cheery and ready to
act.

"From Waterloo. Plenty of time. We are all right after all. . . .
What's the matter now? This isn't the way," he protested.

Mrs Verloc, having hooked her arm into his, was trying to drag him into
Brett Street again.

"I've forgotten to sh