draw a breath
of relief as if there had come a temporary lifting of the torture she
endured. Then, with her first movement, as she looked about the room in
the effort to bring order into the confusion of her thoughts, her eyes
encountered the array of wedding presents, and the expression of her
face changed back into the panic terror in which she had couched against
the wall before Kemper's approach. She still saw herself revealed in the
light of the scorn which had blazed in his eyes; and the one idea which
possessed her now was to escape beyond the place where that look might
again reach her. An instinct for flight like that of a wild thing in a
jungle shook through her until she stood in a quiver from head to foot;
and though she knew neither where she was going, nor of what use this
flight would be to her, she went into her bedroom and began to dress
herself hastily in her walking clothes. As she tied on her veil and took
up her little black bag from the drawer she heard her own voice, which
sounded to her ears like the voice of a stranger, repeating the words
she had said to Kemper a little earlier: "No--no--I cant. It is
impossible." And she said over these words many times because they
infused into her heart the courage of despair which she needed to impel
her to the step before her. When the door closed after her and she went
down into the street, she was still speaking them half aloud to herself:
"No--no--it is impossible."

The dusk had already settled; ahead of her the lights of the city shone
blurred through the greyness, while above the housetops Auriga was
driving higher in the east. With the first touch of fresh air in her
face, she felt herself inspired by an energy; which seemed a part of the
wind that blew about her; and as she walked rapidly through streets
which she did not notice toward an end of which she was still ignorant,
her thoughts breaking from the restraint which held them, rushed in an
excited tumult through her brain.

"Why did he look at me so?" she asked, "for it is this look which has
driven me away--which has made me hate both him and myself." She tried
to recall the other expression which she had loved in his face, but
instead there returned to her only the angry look with which he had
responded to her confession.

As she thought of it now it appeared to her that death was the only
means by which she could free herself and him from this marriage; and
the several ways of dying whic