osed
the door behind him.

The clock struck the half-hour. Their conversation had lasted less than
five minutes.

CHAPTER XXX

TRIBUTE TO THE MINOTAUR

The scene of Paul's departure was no worse than many an outbreak in the
ordinary married life of ordinary, quick-tempered, over-tired married
people, for whom an open quarrel brings relief like the clearing of the
air after an electric storm, but to Lydia it was no such surface
manifestation of nerves. The impulse that had made them both break out
into the cruel words came from some long-gathering bitterness, the very
existence of which was like the end of all things to her. A single flash
of lightning had showed her to the edge of what a terrifying precipice
they had strayed, and then had left her in darkness.

That was how it seemed to her; she was in the most impenetrable
blackness, though the little girl played on beside her with a child's
cheerful blindness to its elder's emotion, and Anastasia detected
nothing but that her mistress had a better color than before and stepped
about quite briskly.

It was the restless activity of a tortured animal which drove Lydia from
one household task to another, hurrying her into a trembling physical
exhaustion, which, however, brought with it no instant's cessation of
the tumult in her heart. The night after Paul's departure was like a
black eternity to her turning wildly on her bed, or rising to walk as
wildly about the silent house. "But I can't stand this!--to hate and be
hated! I can not bear it! I must do something--but what? but what?" Once
she feared she had screamed out these ever-recurring words, so audibly
like a cry of agony did they ring in her ears; but, forcing herself to
an instant's immobility, she heard Ariadne's light, regular breathing
continue undisturbed.

She sat down on her bed and told herself that she would go out of her
mind if she could not think something different from this chaos of angry
misery. She fell on her knees, she sent her soul out in a supreme appeal
for help and, still kneeling, she felt the intolerable tension within
her loosen. She began to cry softly. The unnatural strength which had
sustained her gave way; she sank together in a heap, her head leaning
against the bed, her arms thrown out across it. Here Anastasia found her
the next morning, apparently asleep, although upon being called she
seemed to come to herself from a deeper unconsciousness.

Whatever it had been