hands and saw that they were
trembling violently. She went to the door and shut it. Then she sat down
on the sofa at the foot of the bed. She clasped her hands together in
her lap, but they went on trembling. Pulses were beating in her eyelids.
She felt utterly degraded, like a scrupulously clean person who has been
rolled in the dirt. And she fancied she heard a faint and mysterious
sound, pathetic and terrible, but very far away--the white angel in her
weeping.

And the believers in the angel--were they weeping too?

She found herself wondering as a sleeper wonders in a dream.

Presently she got up. She could not sit there and see her hands
trembling. She did not walk about the room, but went over to the
dressing-table and stood by it, resting her hands upon it and leaning
forward. The attitude seemed to relieve her. She remained there for a
long time, scarcely thinking at all, only feeling degraded, unclean. The
sight of physical violence in her own drawing-room, caused by her, had
worked havoc in her. She had always thought she understood the brute in
man. She had often consciously administered to it. She had coaxed
it, flattered it, played upon it even--surely--loved it. Now she had
suddenly seen it rush out into the full light, and it had turned her
sick.

The gold things on the dressing-table--bottles, brushes, boxes,
trays--looked offensive. They were like lies against life, frauds.
Everything in the pretty room was like a lie and a fraud. There ought to
be dirt, ugliness about her. She ought to stand with her feet in mud and
look on blackness. The angel in her shuddered at the siren in her now,
as at a witch with power to evoke Satanic things, and she forgot the
trembling of her hands in the sensation of the trembling of her soul.
The blow of Fritz, the blow of Leo Ulford, had both struck her. She felt
a beaten creature.

The door opened. She did not turn round, but she saw in the glass her
husband come in. His coat was torn. His waistcoat and shirt were almost
in rags. There was blood on his face and on his right hand. In his
eyes there was an extraordinary light, utterly unlike the light of
intelligence, but brilliant, startling; flame from the fire by which the
animal in human nature warms itself. In the glass she saw him look at
her. The light seemed to stream over her, to scorch her. He went into
his dressing-room without a word, and she heard the noise of water being
poured out and used for washing.