"Ate them all."
He stared at her as though he could not comprehend it. "And he--he is--well?"
"He's well."
The schoolmaster put his hand to his head. He could hardly credit that anybody could have eaten those mushrooms--the devil's toadstool and the fly agaric--and remain alive and well. There was something wrong about it. Or there had been some mistake. But he had made no mistake--no, most certainly not, he protested, grasping her hands.
It was as though a stream of longing and love, of despairing, impotent, all-yielding, all forgetting passion were flowing from him to her.
But she remained cool. "My stepson is coming to-day," she remarked.
Then he burst into tears, and falling on his knees before her he pressed her hands, which she had to give up to him, against his face, and kissed them as though he were mad. It was so long since he had enjoyed the sight of her. But now her nearness overpowered him entirely, and he had no longer the strength to struggle against anything. He stammered words full of frantic, jealous passion and sobbed.
"Let my hands go," she said impatiently, endeavouring to free them. "Let them go, I tell you. How can you kiss these hands"--she laughed strangely--"hands that wanted to give Mr. Tiralla rat poison this morning. If the poultry had died from eating the corn this morning, he would by now have lain dead from taking the same poison."
He was not listening to what she was saying. Let her accuse herself, let others accuse her, she was still his sun, his heaven, his highest aim. And he would never, never, never leave her in the lurch. If she wished it, he would swear it by all the saints. If only she had asked his advice about this too. The poultry had not died from eating the poisoned wheat she had scattered, because--he had once read it somewhere--because strychnine, that fearful poison which kills rats at once, does not harm chickens.
"And human beings?" she interrupted him passionately. She seized hold of the man's shoulders as he knelt before her and stared at his face, which he had raised to hers with a look full of fervour. "What about human beings?"