In a few brief disconnected sentences she told him all that she had concealed from him: Bäbi's spying on her, the ashes, the scene with Sami, the carnival, the public insult that was before her. As she told her story she was unable to distinguish between the figments of her fear and what she had any reason to fear. He listened in utter consternation, and was no more capable than she of discerning between the real and the imaginary in her story. Nothing had ever been farther from his mind than to suspect how they were being dogged. He tried to understand: he could find nothing to say: against such enemies he was disarmed. Only he was conscious of a blind fury, a desire to strike and to destroy. He said:
"Why didn't you dismiss Bäbi?"
She did not deign to reply. Bäbi dismissed would have been even more venomous than Bäbi tolerated: and Christophe saw the idiocy of his question. His thoughts were in a whirl: he was trying to discover a way out, some immediate action upon which to engage. He clenched his fists and cried:
"I'll kill them?"
"Who?" she said, despising him for his futile words.
He lost all power of thought or action. He felt that he was lost in such a network of obscure treachery, in which it was impossible to clutch at anything since all were parties to it. He writhed.
"Cowards!" he cried, in sheer despair.
He slipped down on to his knees and buried his face against Anna.—They were silent for a little. She felt a mixture of contempt and pity for the man who could defend neither himself nor her. He felt Anna's limbs trembling with cold against his cheek. The window had been left open, and outside it was freezing: they could see the icy stars shivering in the sky that was smooth and gleaming as a mirror.
When she had fully tasted the bitter joy of seeing him as broken as herself, she said in a hard, weary voice:
"Light the candle."