The shock of Maggie Peterson's arrest, climaxing emotion, was still on him. Definitely his experience knew himself defeated. "God!" he muttered, "another night--another night of the rack."
The previous night had been torment enough. Then he had thought: "I may fail. Cavendish may have something up his sleeve"; then he had seen only success in jeopardy; dreaded only the failure of his vengeance. But now--now he was beaten--worse than beaten--delivered up, body and soul, to the Furies.
The clerk came in to ask if he might go. "Yes," said Brunton; "go. Go as soon as you like." The clerk went out, leaving him alone; alone with his Furies.
The Furies showed him Aliette, infinitely fastidious, infinitely desirable; they showed him Renée, Renée who would even now be awaiting him; they showed Lucy, Lucy Towers, stubborn in her cell. "Don't let her go free from her cell," whispered the Furies. "You're not beaten yet. She did kill the man. Convict her, Hector Brunton. Convict her of manslaughter."
They showed him Cavendish, Cavendish gloating at the prospect of victory. "To be beaten," whispered the Furies, "to be beaten by Cavendish, by the adulterer who stole away your wife!"
But all the time Hector Brunton knew in his inmost soul that he had sought to compass the death of an innocent woman; that he had sinned against his own code, against the holy ghost of justice.
And gradually, terrifyingly, the reason of that sinning was brought home to him. He had sinned, not as a woman sins, lovingly, but for sheer hate. Out of his hatred for Cavendish he had plotted--as surely as any murderer--the death of Lucy Towers.
And suddenly, starkly, irresistibly, it was brought home to him that--even as he had plotted the death of Lucy Towers--so, and for the same hideous reason, he had plotted the social ruin of his own wife.
Till finally the ultimate pretext, the pretext of his love for Aliette, was stripped from him, and he saw that love in all its hideous nakedness, as lust--the savage sadic lust which had hounded him to crime.