“Enough of what, Stephen?” I endeavored to ask, quietly.
He knocked his knuckles on the table with a force that almost made them bleed.
“My name is Cantyre—do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand. But tell me, what is it you’ve had enough of?”
“I’ve had enough of your damned diplomatic slyness in setting that old reptile on me!”
I am not quick tempered. The tolerance born of a too painful knowledge of my own shortcomings obliges me to be slow to wrath. But when anger does get hold of me it works a change like that of a powerful chemical agent suddenly infused into the blood.
I turned and strode out. A few times in the trenches I had been the victim of this rage to kill—and I had killed. How many I killed at one time or another I now couldn’t tell you. I saw too red to keep the count. All I know is that I have stuck my bayonet into heart after heart, and have dashed out brains with the butt end of my rifle. It is all red before me still—a great splash of blood on the memory.
But I had got the habit. In a rage like this to kill some one had become an instinct. I could not have believed that the impulse would have pursued me into civil life; but there it was.
Having flung open the door of my apartment, I marched straight for the “kitchingette.” Lovey was seated on a stool beside the tiny gas-range, polishing one of my boots. The boot was like a boxing-glove on his left hand, while he held the brush suspended in his right, looking up at me with the piteous appeal of a rabbit pleading for its life.
His weakness held me back from striking him, but it didn’t stem my words.