At the scream Saffren turned. She made straight at him, crying wildly:
“Enfin! Mon mari, mon mari—c’est moi! C’est ta femme, mon coeur!”
She threw herself upon him, her arms about his neck, with a tropical ferocity that was a very paroxysm of triumph.
“Embrasse moi, Larrabi! Embrasse moi!” she cried.
Horrified, outraged, his eyes blazing, he flung her off with a violence surpassing her own, and with loathing unspeakable. She screamed that he was killing her, calling him “husband,” and tried to fasten herself upon him again. But he leaped backward beyond the reach of her clutching hands, and, turning, plunged to the steps and staggered up them, the woman following.
From above me leaned the stricken face of Keredec; he caught Saffren under the arm and half lifted him to the gallery, while she strove to hold him by the knees.
“O Christ!” gasped Saffren. “Is THIS the woman?”
The giant swung him across the gallery and into the open door with one great sweep of the arm, strode in after him, and closed and bolted the door. The woman fell in a heap at the foot of the steps, uttered a cracked simulation of the cry of a broken heart.
“Name of a name of God!” she wailed. “After all these years! And my husband strikes me!”
Then it was that what had been in my mind as a monstrous suspicion became a certainty. For I recognised the woman; she was Mariana—la bella Mariana la Mursiana.