His hand came down heavily and swept the light table aside.
“You can’t do it. You shan’t do it. By God you shan’t.”
How it happened I couldn’t see. He was too quick. But at one moment she held the letter, and in the next he had it, and was kneeling at the grate, while she cried out—
“Kent!” And then—“Lila! Jasper! Stop him!”
Nobody could have stopped him. There was no flame, but the fire still burned, a caked red and black lump, smouldering on cinders. He picked it up—with his naked hands—thrust in the crumpled stiff paper, and smashed it down again, so that the lump split, and still held it pressed down, with naked hands, till the sheet had charred and shrivelled into nothing. I suppose it all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed like hours. I was in a train smash once: I wasn’t hurt; but I remember that I came out of it with just the same sense of being battered and aged. This scene I had only watched: I had not shared in it: I was still in the little outer room. Yet I was shaken. I heard Mr. Flood call out—“Kent, you crazy fool!” I heard Anita—“Let me go, Lila!” And then the women were between me and him, and I could only see their backs, and there was a babel of voices, and I found myself sitting like a fool, clutching at the arms of my chair, and saying over and over again—“Oh, his hands, his hands, his poor hands!” The tears were running down my cheeks.
But nobody noticed me. They were all too busy. The group had shifted a little. The Baxter girl was edged out of it, and I watched her for a moment as she sat down again, her cheeks flaming, her eyes as bright as wet pebbles. She looked—it’s the only word—consumptive with excitement. Every now and then she tried not to cough. I heard her saying—“It’s the fog, it’s the awful fog!” defensively. But nobody listened. They were all watching Anita.
Anita was dreadful. She was tremulous with anger. She was like a pendulum with the check taken away. Her whole body shook. She couldn’t finish her sentences. She talked to everyone at once.
Miss Howe had her by the arm. Miss Howe was trying to quiet her—
“My dear woman—steady now! You don’t want a row, you know! You’ve got the rest of the papers.” But she might have talked to the wind.
“He comes into my house—my property—in my own house——It’s an outrage! Kent, it’s an outrage!”