After that it was always blurred—his picture. He could not remember anything more. But there lived with him, like a shadow, a mad longing to kill his father!
He sat out there playing with the white cloth he held in his hand. The day was dying down, and it grew a little chilly, as days will in September. He crept from the garden-chair to the stone steps that led to the library above, where his father always sat.
The father was sitting there now, lying back in his lounging-chair and thinking. Oddly enough, in spite of himself, his thoughts ran to his dead wife. As a rule he did not permit himself to think of her, and it seemed absurd to do it now—now when he was thinking of taking a second wife.
He had come in from his round of daily visits a little fatigued. He was careful now to fatigue himself as much as possible during the daytime, it was so difficult to drop to sleep at night. He had seen Agatha for a moment, and had come home full of her—of the sweet beauty of her gentle face—of her superior air—of the extreme coldness of the salute she gave him.
The evening was wonderfully quiet. He lay back, and tried to bring up Agatha's face before him. But somehow she eluded him. He almost laughed aloud. It seemed so absurd. Her face, that was ever before him. No! he could not bring it up now—not so much as a feature. He laid his hands over his eyes, leaning back in his chair, to compel the vision. In the complete darkness he might find her.
But he did not—Instead, another face arose—pale, cold, ghastly! Once again he was staring at his unlovely dead! That hideous face! Great heavens! and lying there—there, sprawling on the floor with the mouth half open!
He dashed his hands from his eyes, and stood up, and stared before him, and then a yell broke from him!
....
Over there!.... What was that over there, in the shadow? That frightful face with a white cloth laid across it. Was it she come back to torment him?
Again he felt his hand pressing the wet handkerchief upon her nose, her mouth, and the faint struggle beneath his fingers. Such a sickening struggle! Again he pressed, and pressed, until he had pressed the very life out of her!