furious growling of a dog--a string of blasphemies and
filth.

Just so much she understood. Yet she held her ground, unable to speak,
conscious of the torrent of language that swirled against her from
that suffused face opposite, yet not understanding a tenth part of
what she heard.

... "In the name of..."

On the instant the words ceased; but so overpowering was the venom and
malice of the silence that followed that again she was silent,
perceiving that the utmost she could do was to hold her ground. So the
two stood. If the words were horrible to hear, the silence was more
horrible a thousand times; it was as when a man faces the suddenly
opened door of a furnace and sees the white cavern within.

He was the first to speak.

"You had better take care," he said.

III

She scarcely knew how it was that she found herself again in her
chair, with the figure seated opposite.

It seemed that the direct assault was useless. And indeed she was no
longer capable of making it. The nausea had returned, and with it a
sensation of weakness. Her knees still were lax and useless; and her
hand, as she turned it on the chair-arm, shook violently. Yet she had
a curious sense of irresponsibility: there was no longer any
terror--nothing but an overpowering weakness of reaction.

She sat back in silence for some minutes, looking now at the fire too,
now at the figure opposite, noticing, however, that the helplessness
seemed gone. His hands dangled no longer; he sat upright, his hands
clasped, yet with a curious look of stiffness and unnaturalness.

Once more she began deliberately to attempt to gather her forces; but
the will, it appeared, had lost its nervous grasp of the faculties. It
had no longer that quick grip and command with which she had begun.
Passivity rather than activity seemed her strength....

Then suddenly and, as it appeared, inevitably, without movement or
sound, she began internally to pray, closing her eyes, careless, and
indeed unfearing. It seemed her one hope. And behind the steady
movement of her will--sufficient at least to elicit acts of
petition--her intellect observed a thousand images and thoughts. She
perceived the silence of the house and of the breathless spring night
outside; she considered Mr. Cathcart in the inn across the road, Mrs.
Baxter upstairs: she contemplated the future as it would be on the
morrow--Easter Day, was it not?--the past, and scarcely at all the
present. She relinqui