making a streak of silver
flow into a gleaming pail, amid the luminous blush of the polished
tiles and the gold of the brass pans. The greenish light from the
window-glass was moistening her skin. She saw me and she smiled.

I knew that she always smiled at us. But we were alone! I felt a mad
longing arise. There was something in me that was stronger than I,
that ravished the picture of her. Every second she became more
beautiful. Her plump dress proffered her figure to my eyes, and her
skirt trembled over her polished sabots. I looked at her neck, at her
throat--that extraordinary beginning. A strong perfume that enveloped
her shoulders was like the truth of her body. Urged forward, I went
towards her, and I could not even speak.

She had lowered her head a little; her eyebrows had come nearer
together under the close cluster of her hair; uneasiness passed into
her eyes. She was used to the boyish mimicry of infatuated men. But
this woman was not for me! She dealt me the blow of an unfeeling
laugh, and disappearing, shut the door in my face.

I opened the door. I followed her into an outhouse. Stammering
something, I found touch again with her presence, I held out my hand.
She slipped away, she was escaping me forever--when a monstrous Terror
stopped her!

The walls and roof drew near in a hissing crash of thunder, a dreadful
hatch opened in the ceiling and all was filled with black fire. And
while I was hurled against the wall by a volcanic blast, with my eyes
scorched, my ears rent, and my brain hammered, while around me the
stones were pierced and crushed, I saw the woman uplifted in a
fantastic shroud of black and red, to fall back in a red and white
affray of clothes and linen; and something huge burst and naked, with
two legs, sprang at my face and forced into my mouth the taste of
blood.

I know that I cried out, hiccoughing. Assaulted by the horrible kiss
and by the vile clasp that bruised the hand I had offered to the
woman's beauty--a hand still outheld--sunk in whirling smoke and ashes
and the dreadful noise now majestically ebbing, I found my way out of
the place, between walls that reeled as I did. Bodily, the house
collapsed behind me. In my flight over the shifting ground I was
brushed by the mass of maddened falling stones and the cry of the
ruins, sinking in vast dust-clouds as in a tumult of beating wings.

A veritable squall of shells was falling in this corner of the villag