"Tell me about it," I said.
No doubt she strongly wished to talk of it, no doubt, too, she had
often repeated this history for the last six months, for she retailed
it at great length, as a story well-known by heart and invariable in
its repetition.
Then I learnt that for thirty years, the old deaf man had had a
mistress in the neighbouring village, and that his wife having learnt
this by chance from a passing carter, who spoke of it without knowing
who she was, rushed panting and bewildered to the attic, and there
hurled herself from the window, not perhaps with deliberate purpose,
but impelled by the torture of the horrible agony caused by her
discovery, which goaded her forward in an irresistible gust of passion,
like a whip lashing and cutting. She had flown up the staircase, burst
open the door, and without knowing, without being able to stop her
headlong speed, had continued to run straight ahead and had leaped into
empty space.
_He_ had known nothing of it; he did not know even now; he would never
know, because he was deaf. His wife was dead, that was all. All the
world must die some time or other!