For two months I champed upon the bit; then I fled for the fourth time, in the height of summer, this time to Switzerland. But the chain which held me was not an iron chain which I might have been able to break; it was rather an indiarubber cable, elastic and capable of infinite expansion. The stronger the tension, the more irresistibly I was pulled back to the starting point.
Once more I returned, to be rewarded with open contempt; she was sure that another attempt to free myself from her net would kill me, and my death was her only hope.
I fell ill, severely ill, so that I believed myself to be dying; I made up my mind to write the whole story of the past. I could see plainly now that I had been in the power of a vampire. I only wanted to live long enough to cleanse my name from the filth with which she had sullied it. I wanted to live long enough to revenge myself; but first of all I must have proofs of her infidelity.
I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it is the anthithesis of love. I hated her because I loved her.
It was on a Sunday, while we were dining in the summer-arbour, that the electric fluid which had gathered during the last ten years discharged itself. I cannot remember my actual motive, but I struck her, for the first time in my life. I struck her face repeatedly, and when she tried to defend herself I seized her wrists and forced her on her knees. She gave a terrified scream. The temporary satisfaction which I had felt at my action gave way to dismay, for the children, frightened to death, cried out with fear. It was a horrible moment! It is a crime, a most unnatural crime, to strike a woman, a mother, in the presence of her children. It seemed to me that the sun ought to hide his face.... I felt sick to death.
And yet there was peace in my soul, like the calm after a storm, a satisfaction such as is only derived from duty done. I regretted my action, but I felt no remorse. My deed had been as inevitable as cause and effect.
In the evening I saw her walking in the moonlit garden. I joined her; I kissed her. She did not object; she burst into tears. We walked for a few minutes, then she accompanied me to my room and stayed with me until midnight.
How strange is life! In the afternoon I had struck her. At night she held me in her arms and kissed me.
What an extraordinary woman she was, to kiss her executioner with willing lips!
Why had I not known it before? If I had struck her ten years ago I should now have been the happiest of husbands.