The girl was staring at him with her wild eyes—she looked like a hunted creature in a trap. It sounded all so very simple—but the horror of it drove Thyrsis mad. Ah, God, it was monstrous—it was superhuman—it was a thing beyond all thinking! It wrung all his soul, it shook him as the tempest shakes a leaf—the sight of this awful agony.
It was like the sudden closing of a battle; the shock of squadrons, the locking of warriors in a grip of death. There was no longer time for words now, no longer time for a glance about him; the spasms came, one after another, relentless, unceasing, inevitable—each trooping upon the heels of the last; they were uncounted—uncountable—piling upon one another like waves upon the sea, like the gusts of a raging storm. And this girl, this child, that he had watc
