Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/175

Rh me, sleek, well-nourished, over-fed, loathsome, horrible beyond anything I had known. He turned with a jump and sat up. I held the letters against his face, but he was still dazed with sleep and only stared stupidly, first at the letters, then into my face.

I kicked him; I had my boots on.

"Get up!" I said. And, as he got up, rather heavily, trying to protect himself, I kicked him again and again, till at last he stood upright, but at some distance from me, over towards the window. He understood by this time; he saw the letters in my hand. The terror in his face sickened me even in my anger. I saw the evil almost visibly leap out. The unfamiliarity, now that the moustache was gone, the cruelty of the naked lips and mouth, the shrinking of the coward in him, these made an unforgettable picture. He did not utter a syllable.

My own utterance, what words I used, I cannot remember. I did not remember them even ten minutes afterwards, certainly not the next day, when I told the doctor what had happened. Two sentences only remain accurate: "Come close to me. I'm going to kill you," and the other: "Get ready! I'm going to beat you like an animal!"

He stood before me, wearing his short day-shirt without a collar, his hair untidy, his face white, his half-naked body shaking. He dropped to his knees, he got up again and tried to hide, he cringed and whined like a terrified dog, his blue eyes were ghastly. In myself were feelings I had never dreamed I possessed, but whose evidence Boyde must, plainly, have read in my expression. What he could not read, nor ever knew of course, was the fight, the fight of terror, I was having with myself. I felt that once I touched him I should not stop till I had gone too far.

I did not touch him once. Instead, I told him to put on his clothes, his own clothes, and go. He had no clothes of his own. He did not go.... I eventually let him wait till morning, when he could find enough rags of sorts to wear in the street.... He explained that he had Rh