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242 "You can go home alone, can't you?" "Perfectly." Her eyes met his—wrath meeting wrath.

She drove away in the cab. Basil walked up the street, with wild desires to smash something seething in his mind. Brutal dissipation presented itself as a means of forgetting for a time the world and his tormented soul. He turned into a music-hall; and sat alone at a table, and drank three strong whiskies, and looked at the spectacle about him with haggard, forbidding eyes. In half an hour he got up and went home.

He let himself in quietly, and paused at Teresa's closed door. He heard her sobbing—deep, racking, choking sounds of pain. He turned the handle of the door, called her name. The sobs were stifled then, but he heard them still. He called her again, imploringly, angrily, pleadingly, and shook the door, and threatened to break it down. But it remained locked.