On the steps of the house, on the threshold of that accursed place,
stood the woman whom God's minister had given to me in the sight of
God, as my wife.

One long pang of shame and despair shot through my heart as I looked
at her, and tortured out of its trance the spirit within me. Thousands
on thousands of thoughts seemed to be whirling in the wildest
confusion through and through my brain--thoughts, whose track was a
track of fire--thoughts that struck me with a hellish torment of
dumbness, at the very time when I would have purchased with my life
the power of a moment's speech. Voiceless and tearless, I went up to
her, and took her by the arm, and drew her away from the house. There
was some vague purpose in me, as I did this, of never quitting my hold
of her, never letting her stir from me by so much as an inch, until I
had spoken certain words to her. What words they were, and when I
should utter them, I could not tell.

The cry for mercy was on her lips, but the instant our eyes met, it
died away in long, low, hysterical moanings. Her cheeks were ghastly,
her features were rigid, her eyes glared like an idiot's; guilt and
terror had made her hideous to look upon already.

I drew her onward a few paces towards the Square. Then I stopped,
remembering the body that lay face downwards on the road. The savage
strength of a few moments before, had left me from the time when I
first saw her. I now reeled where I stood, from sheer physical
weakness. The sound of her pantings and shudderings, of her abject
inarticulate murmurings for mercy, struck me with a supernatural
terror. My fingers trembled round her arm, the perspiration dripped
down my face, like rain; I caught at the railings by my side, to keep