“Diana! I did not know! I have not been untrue to you.”
I struck her on the mouth, and she staggered back, with that red lie printed on it for the delectation of her paramour. She clutched at the table, reeled, and sank down beside it moaning. It was too much. My fury had flashed to an explosion in that wicked falsehood.
Pissani, with a sudden and terrible cry at the sight of his mistress’s disgrace, drew a knife from his hip, and leapt like a goat across the table. Stumbling as he alighted, she caught him frantic round the knees, and held him raging and snarling while he stabbed at the air in his frenzy. I stood fallen back a little, white and scornful, but with not a thrill of fear at my heart; and, so standing, saw how, in the thick blindness of his rage, he was yet tender of her in his struggles to free himself. And then in a moment he had fallen upon his knees, the blade yet in his hand, and was kissing and caressing her, moaning inarticulate love into her ear. She tried feebly to repulse him; to drag herself away and towards me. I had always known that she was of the fools who caress the hands that scourge them. But I sprang back, loathing her neighbourhood.
“Don’t come near me,” I cried.
He had kissed the blood from her mouth to his own. He struck the spot there with a furious hand, as he turned on me.
“By this,” he said, “your death or mine!”
I laughed scornfully.
“So brutes revenge themselves on the innocence they have despoiled!”
“It is a lie!” he raged; and, on the word, put a fierce arm about his wife. “Believe it is a lie, thou!”
But she was still struggling to reach me.