He put out the light, closed the door and passing through
the crowd of revellers, went off to Simon's house.




CHAPTER V

THE PATRIOT'S HEART



The inside of Paulina's house was a wreck. The remains of benches
and chairs and tables mingled with fragments of vessels of
different sorts strewn upon the filth-littered floor, the windows
broken, the door between the outer and inner rooms torn from its
hinges, all this debris, together with the battered, bruised and
bloody human shapes lying amidst their filth, gave eloquent
testimony to the tempestuous character of the proceedings of the
previous night.

The scene that greeted Paulina's eyes in the early grey of the
morning might well have struck a stouter heart than hers with
dismay; for her house had the look of having been swept by a
tornado, and Paulina's heart was anything but stout that morning.
The sudden appearance of her husband had at first stricken her
with horrible fear, the fear of death; but this fear had passed
into a more dreadful horror, that of repudiation.