Here were the ruins, the sweep of the hill had brought him out too low. Funny how Norah hated the place—fancy, of course. Was that her voice he heard? But quinine makes your ears sing and then you imagine voices. Still those deep tones of Norah's.... He'd just look round the tower to see if any chance had brought her there. She'd be angry with him for leaving bed....
He rounded the ruined tower and stood as if paralysed by what he saw. His right knee bent to advance began to tremble violently with slow, separated jerks. He tried to raise his voice, but his lips had gone dry. They felt swollen. He had not had this feeling since the nightmares of his childhood when he had seemed to cower in a small dark room, gasping for air, while a shapeless, colourless, nameless body like a distorted featherbed or an obscene grand piano was swelling, swelling and crushing him out of existence. The oncoming of absolute and inevitable disaster.
So he stood, while not twenty yards from his eyes, Norah's body lay fast held in Ward's arms. His kisses rained on her white face. Her tired eyes were shut—he imagined the little blue veins in their lids—and she seemed to swoon with pleasure.
In spite of the resolution he had taken in the hills, at moments Archie's rage against Dick had rowelled him. Imagination had goaded him with intolerable pictures of his wife's intimacy with her lover, kissing, for instance, body to body, Dick's rather full lips crushed into her carmine mouth. The vision always lashed him to a mute fury in which he could feel his rival's throat bulge under his fingers. Fever had given body to these visions and had reduced his self-control. But except perhaps in dreams, such as Norah had witnessed, the crisis was momentary and quickly overcome.
When, therefore, a few yards off, he saw his wife's pale face forced back by the weight of her lover's kiss, her little body crushed by the violence of his arms, the familiar process was started. Rage blazed up to be as instantly curbed by will. Fiercely he commanded his passion, until realisation dawned. This was no unhealthy, torturing fancy, but an enactment in flesh and blood. And if the picture before him was real, so was that throat real. At any rate the weight of the gun on his shoulder was real. But where did imagination start and reality end? Had he imagined Norah promising him that morning to give up Ward and, if he said the word, come back to him? No, that was real. Then this picture that seemed to sear his eyes must be the work of fever in his brain. Norah did not lie. And she had promised ... he then must be mad. Fever was not enough to cast shadows so solid as those before his eyes.... Fact or fancy, he'd stop it, by God!
He humped up his shoulder, and the barrel of the rifle fell into his left palm. The familiar feel of the metal cleared his mind. Those were real people over there, Dick Ward and Norah Sinclair; real, mortal, vulnerable people. And Norah had lied to him that morning; had come to him with her flesh a-tingle perhaps from Ward's kisses, and had lied to make Ward safe. Well, she shouldn't get away with the lie. Hot fury blazed in Archie's breast, and power of motion returned.
He must have shouted, though he did not hear his voice; a startled face turned towards him, and slowly, oh! slowly, Norah's eyes opened.
He saw his enemy drop Norah, start to his feet, snatch at a gun that lay on the ground. With his right thumb Archie pushed over his safety catch, and for an instant the barrel rested on Norah. She had been fooling him all the time, perhaps all these years she had fooled him.... Then the sights swung round and aligned on Dick. Some one should pay him for this.
Before Ward could raise his rifle from hip to shoulder, a shot rang through the ruins. His knees sagged, bent; then he toppled over with his face rubbing the ground. His shoulders twitched and his hands opened and clenched. A jerk, and he had twisted on to his back. Thus he lay staring at the sky, and the tissue of enterprise and weakness, frailty and charm that had been Dick Ward ceased to exist."