He came close to her, all flaming with hate. He noticed
the blue shadows under her eyes, smelt the fire on her clothes. She
recoiled from the whisky on his breath, which, from association with
her childhood's horrors, always reduced her to a state of unreasoning
terror.
"Oh blast you--too fine to come near me, are you? You were damned glad
to pick me up, anyway--and so you ought to be, with your drunken old
scab of a father!"
She, in her turn, blazed and tingled; murder was in the ends of her
fingers that quivered towards him. Luckily she had dropped the pickaxe.
But her movements were slow, and his quick, and he got behind her in an
instant. Next moment, without realizing what he was doing, he pushed her
violently. She stumbled a few steps and fell heavily against the blunt
end of the pickaxe. For an instant he stood looking at her; the next
moment with a hoarse cry he was kneeling beside her.
"Oh my darling," he cried. "I told you I'd kill you in the end! I told
you the damn stuff was making a madman of me."
The whisky vanished from him like the flashing of lightning. Lifting her
in his arms he carried her homewards and laid her down on the verandah.
Frantic with fear he was going to fetch Mrs. Twist when she sat up
rather shakily and looked at him.
"I suppose that's what you've been expecting me to do--faint all over
the place--swounds and vapours," she said, laughing faintly.
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