She weighed them up and down. They were as light—as light as love.... Deliberately she let them shower through her fingers on to the floor. But the carpet was thick and they took no harm.
Then, as if in spite of herself, she put out her foot and crushed them where they lay.
She stood a moment, slurring her shoe to and fro, mechanically, to free it from the crumbs of shell, and then turned to the cabinet between the window and the door. That came next.... If you began a job, you must finish it....
She pulled open the doors one by one, sliding out the glass, and ran her hand from hollow to hollow in the cotton-wool. A pressure was enough for the smooth, frail eggs of the finches and the tits. They crumpled like hare-bells. For the bigger specimens she had to use both hands. They would not break unless she held them sideways, and then they cracked sharply, scratching her palms.
The business was soon done. She left the cabinet open and awry, and sat down in the window-seat.
After a pause she discovered that she was breathing again.
But before her mind had time to consider that phenomenon it was distracted by another. There was a sound, immense, insistent—sound of an earth rhythmically convulsed—sound as of an army, an army with banners, marching upon her to the eternal, infernal repetition of the drums, drawing nearer, entering definitely into her, and resolving itself at last into the throb of her own pulses, into the beating of her own heart, obsessed by the guilty, idiotic terror of nightmare itself.
‘Nightmare!’ The recognition of the word, of the state, brought relief. ‘Nightmare!’...
“Justin—I have broken——” That was the sort of thing one did in nightmare, just before one woke.... But one always woke.... She herself would be waking in a moment with a gasp of relief.... “Not true! I never did it! A dream!” And she would open her eyes and see the blessed sunshine filtering through the blinds, and hear the birds bickering in the roses, and so turn on her pillow and drowse till breakfast time. Not true! Thank God that even in nightmare one always knew that it was not true, although one were looking at Justin’s cabinet and the door stood wide.... If Justin came in ... at any moment he might come ... he would wonder why ... he would discover....
In an instant she was across the room, thrusting back the long drawers one after another with hands that shook. Her haste made her clumsy. The wood stuck and squeaked and the handles jingled so loudly that it was impossible that Justin should not hear them out in the woods and come quickly and catch her in the act.