her head thrown over
the back of the seat. He thought the piercing noise was a delusion.
But another shrill peal followed by a deep sob and succeeded by another
shriek of mirth positively seemed to tear him out from where he stood.
He bounded to the door. It was closed. He turned the key and thought:
that's no good. . . . "Stop this!" he cried, and perceived with alarm
that he could hardly hear his own voice in the midst of her screaming.
He darted back with the idea of stifling that unbearable noise with his
hands, but stood still distracted, finding himself as unable to touch
her as though she had been on fire. He shouted, "Enough of this!" like
men shout in the tumult of a riot, with a red face and starting eyes;
then, as if swept away before another burst of laughter, he disappeared
in a flash out of three looking-glasses, vanished suddenly from before
her. For a time the woman gasped and laughed at no one in the luminous
stillness of the empty room.

He reappeared, striding at her, and with a tumbler of water in his hand.
He stammered: "Hysterics--Stop--They will hear--Drink this." She laughed
at the ceiling. "Stop this!" he cried. "Ah!"

He flung the water in her face, putting into the action all the secret
brutality of his spite, yet still felt that it would have been
perfectly excusable--in any one--to send the tumbler after the water. He
restrained himself, but at the same time was so convinced nothing could
stop the horror of those mad shrieks that, when the first sensation of
relief came, it did not even occur to him to doubt the impression of
having become suddenly deaf. When, next moment, he became sure that she
was sitting up, and really very quiet, it was as though everything--men,
things, sensations, had come to a rest. He was prepared to be grateful.
He could not take his eyes off her, fearing, yet unwilling to admit,
the possibility of her beginning again; for, the experience, however
contemptuously he tried to think of it, had left the bewilderment of a
mysterious terror. Her face was streaming with water and tears; there
was a wisp of hair on her forehead, another stuck to her cheek; her hat
was on one side, undecorously tilted; her soaked veil resembled a sordid
rag festooning her forehead. There was an utter unreserve in her aspect,
an abandonment of safeguards, that ugliness of truth which can only be
kept out of daily life by unremitting care for appearances. He did not
know why, looking at her,