In thinking
otherwise was it that I took that last step to the very bottom of the hell
that I had myself created for myself that night.
The rest was as nothing by comparison. I have said that it was not by act
or speech that I added to the sum of my iniquities; and yet it was by both.
First, in that fiercely echoed "We?" that I hurled at her to strike her
from me; then in my precipitate flight alone.
How I stumbled from that room I scarcely know. The events of the time that
followed immediately upon Fifanti's death are all blurred as the
impressions of a sick man's dream.
I dimly remember that as she backed away from me until her shoulders
touched the wall, that as she stood so, all white and lovely as any snare
that Satan ever devised for man's ruin, staring at me with mutely pleading
eyes, I staggered forward, avoiding the sight of that dreadful huddle on
the floor, over which Busio was weeping foolishly.
As I stepped a sudden moisture struck my stockinged feet. Its nature I
knew by instinct upon the instant, and filled by it with a sudden
unreasoning terror, I dashed with a loud cry from the room.
Along the passage and down the dark stairs I plunged until I reached the
door of the house. It stood open and I went heedlessly forth. From
overhead I heard Giuliana calling me in a voice that held a note of
despair.
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