A flush passed across her face as she looked at it, and was followed by
a marked paleness. She gazed at the portrait for a moment, then her lips
parted and a great sigh broke from her. She was about to hand it back to
him, but an inspiration seemed to seize her, and she threw it on the
floor and put her heel upon it. "That is the way I treated him," she
said, and she ground her heel into the face of the portrait. Then she
took her foot away. "See, see," she cried, "how his face is scarred and
torn! I did that. Do you know what it is to torture one who loves you?
No, you do not. You begin with shame and regret. But the sight of your
lover's agonies, his indignation, his anger, madden you and you get the
lust of cruelty. You become insane. You make new wounds. You tear open
old ones. You cut, you thrust, you bruise, you put acid in the sores--
the sharpest nitric acid; and then you heal with a kiss of remorse, and
that is acid too--carbolic acid, and it smells of death. They put it in
the room where dead people are. Have you ever been to the Morgue in
Paris? They use it there."

She took up the portrait. "Look," she said, "how his face is torn!
Tell me of him."

"First, who are you?"

She steadied herself. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I am his friend, Blake Shorland."

"Yes, I remember your name." She threw her hands up with a laugh, a
bitter hopeless laugh. Her eyes half closed, so that only light came
from them, no colour. The head was thrown back with a defiant
recklessness, and then she said: "I was Lucile Laroche, his wife--Luke