It was done before she knew what she was doing, an instant after she had knocked the pan spinning out of his light grasp into mid-stream, her thin and ragged self-control bursting like tissue before the intolerable flame of her resentment. The torrent of words came afterwards: she saw his smile quietly, and lashed out in sudden fear at the good-humored white flash of his teeth, but her clenched fist met empty air.
He bent her over his knee and did exactly what he had promised to do, with an impersonal efficiency quite devoid of heat. When he released her she was sobbing with impotent rage and real stinging pain. She turned and ran blindly up the bank: if she had had a knife she would have driven it into his throat, but without it her one idea was to get away. Half unconsciously she found the path which he had pointed out as the one that ran into Austria. There must be a road somewhere further on: there would be cars, someone would give her a lift. Her eyes were hot and swimming with shame and anger.
Then she looked back and saw him following her. She glimpsed his tall figure through the trees, rucksack on back, swinging lithely along without making any effort to overtake her. She plunged on till her lungs were bursting and the agony of her stiffened joints made every step a torture, but he was always the same distance behind, unhurried and inescapable as doom. She had to rest or fall down.
“Go away! Go away!” she cried, and struggled on with her heart pounding.
The trees thinned out, and she saw telegraph poles on the other side of a field. She ran out into the road. A truck was coming towards her, headed south: she stood in the middle of the road and waved to it till it stopped.
“Take me wherever you’re going!” she babbled. “Take me to Innsbruck! I’ll pay you anything you ask!”
The driver looked down at her uncomprehendingly.
“Innsbruck?” He pointed down the road. “ Dorthin. Aber es ist sehr weit zu laufen— ”
She pantomimed frantically, trying to make him understand. Why couldn’t she speak German?... And then the Saint’s clear voice spoke coolly from the side of the road, in the driver’s own idiom.
“Permit me to introduce my wife. A little family argument. Please don’t bother. She’ll get over it.”