eir tune rose to the surface and
changed to a peal which drew me on. Yet I remained on the spot, like a
beast with lowered head led by a rope.

I saw his gesture in time.

He was advancing towards me, his fist raised. Did he mean to strike?
What did it matter? I was no longer in a condition to judge. A roll of
thunder was shivering my inner trouble into a thousand bits, there was a
flash of lightning which unloosened everything, even my tongue. I was
speaking, I was speaking at last....

What did I say? Really, almost nothing, because in the frantic swiftness
of his anger he broke in upon my first words. "Get out, get out!" He
showed me his hand as if he were cursing his hand, too, forever.

The door closing behind me made a very long and very impressive sound.

I was on the landing of the staircase. No sound. The electric light
cruelly exaggerated the red spiral of the carpet and touched each copper
bar of the banisters with a tiny comet.

Alone.

And suddenly ... what did it all mean? I no longer understood.
That outburst of cries, that tempest, that sort of comedy, my
reply ... what ... I went and sat down, tempted equally to laugh and to
cry. I wanted to think ... but it was already done, an almost outside
force was pushing me off my hinges. "Escaped!" I was like a prisoner who
sees the door left open inadvertently.

I knocked gently, my entire presence of mind returning to me in a rush.
Leontine came with a pseudo-contrite expression and an air of saying
"Hush!" while beneath her manner was the concentrated delight of an
animal lying in wait. "They are at dinner," she whispered while I got my
things together, a frock, a blouse, some toilet articles, a little
money, some linen, a few books.

I closed the front door on myself, slowly, without faltering, slowly. It
was done. It was not difficult.

A faint wind blew from the street below which chilled me.... Ah, you are
trembling already, you are drawing back. That fine courage of yours,
where is it? Where is your all-powerful will, and your still surer
hope?...

It was not out of cowardice that I was trembling; but as I advanced
towards my Self, street by street, house by house, through my first
ordeal, I got a blunter, deeper knowledge of my Self, and a sudden fear
entered my breast.

I am really not a strong person. What had been struggling in me so
forcibly was not my own strength; it was simply the reaction from the
_others_. A strong person would