"If you do not unlock the door I will break it in!" he said in the same
loud bullying voice he had used to the boy, but which did not alarm me
at all. I knew now that it was a coward's voice--a coward's and a
liar's: my husband's!
I looked at the stout, unpainted deal door and then at some kaffir
curios fastened to the wall on either side of it in rather picturesque
groups. There was quite a collection of strangely shaped knives and
assegais.
"Do you hear? I shall break in the door."
"You may do what you wish. But if you come in here I will kill you."
My voice was very low and quiet, but the hatred in it carried through
the door like a dagger aimed at his heart, and he drew away as if it had
reached him. A moment later he laughed--a coward's laugh--uncertain at
the beginning, then, taking courage from its own loud sound, blustering
at the end. Afterwards he sought in more champagne courage to fulfil
his threat: but he found what was better for him at that time--oblivion.
As for me, I lay on the great white bed with crushed face and clenched
hands, and asked God for death. At first I was a woman in agony, a
tortured and tricked woman whose sorrows were too many for her, whose
right was death as the only solution of the sordid problem. But
afterwards I was only a weeping child, sobbing over the wreckage of my
life, and crying out in the words of my childhood's prayers:
"Oh, gentle Jesus!... Oh, Mary!... have pity on me!"