could. There 's three of beast to one of goddess in her, and set her
alone, and let her be hunted and I not by, beast it is with her!
cowardly skulking beast--the noblest and very bravest under my wing!
Incomprehensible to you, Tresten? But who understands women! You hate
her. Do not. She 's a riddle, but no worse than the rest of the tangle.
She gives me up? Pooh! She writes it. She writes anything. And that
vilest, I say, I will make more enviable, more Clotilde! he thundered her
signature in an amazement, broken suddenly by the sight of her putting
her name to the letter. She had done that, written her name to the
renunciation of him! No individual could bear the sight of such a crime,
and no suffering man could be appeased by a single victim to atone for
it. Her sex must be slaughtered; he raged against the woman; she became
that ancient poisonous thing, the woman; his fury would not distinguish
her as Clotilde, though the name had started him, and it was his
knowledge of the particular sinner which drew down his curses on the sex.
He twisted his body, hugging at his breast as if he had her letter
sticking in his ribs. The letter was up against his ribs, and he thumped
it, crushed it, patted it; he kissed it, and flung it, stamped on it, and
was foul-mouthed. Seeing it at his feet, he bent to it like a man
snapped in two, lamenting, bewailing himself, recovering sight of her
fragmentarily. It stuck in his ribs, and in scorn of the writer, and
sceptical of her penning it, he tugged to pull it out, and broke the
shaft, but left the rankling arrow-head:--she had traced the lines, and
though tyranny racked her to do that thing, his agony followed her hand
over the paper to her name, which fixed and bit in him like the deadly-
toothed arrow-head called asp, and there was no uprooting it. The thing
lived; her deed was the woman; there was no separating them: witness it
in love murdered.

O that woman! She has murdered love. She has blotted love completely