‘Ver’ well,’ he hiccupped morosely, ‘ver’ well; I’m going.  Tha’s all.’

He lurched into the passage, and then I heard him fumbling a long time with the outer door.  He left the door and went into his bedroom, and finally returned to me.  He held one hand behind his back.  I had sunk into a chair by the small table on which the lamp stood, with my satchel beside it.

‘Now!’ he said, halting in front of me.  ‘You’ve locked tha’ door.  I can’t go out.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘Give me the key.’

I shook my head.

‘Give me the key,’ he cried.  ‘I mus’ have the key.’

I shook my head.

Then he showed his right hand, and it held a revolver.  He bent slightly over the table, staring down at me as I stared up at him.  But as his chin felt the heat rising from the chimney of the lamp, he shifted a little to one side.  I might have rushed for shelter into some other room; I might have grappled with him; I might have attempted to soothe him.  But I could neither stir nor speak.  Least of all, could I give him the key—­for him to go and publish his own disgrace in the thoroughfares.  So I just gazed at him, inactive.

‘I s’ll kill you!’ he muttered, and raised the revolver.

My throat became suddenly dry.  I tried to make the motion of swallowing, and could not.  And looking at the revolver, I perceived in a swift revelation the vast folly of my inexperience.  Since he was already drunk, why had I not allowed him to drink more, to drink himself into a stupor?  Drunkards can only be cured when they are sober.  To commence a course of moral treatment at such a moment as I had chosen was indeed the act of a woman.  However, it was too late to reclaim the bottle from the street.

I saw that he meant to kill me.  And I knew that previously, during our encounter at the window, I had only pretended to myself that I thought there was a risk of his killing me.  I had pretended, in order to increase the glory of my martyrdom in my own sight.  Moreover, my brain, which was working with singular clearness, told me that for his sake I ought to give up the key.  His exposure as a helpless drunkard would be infinitely preferable to his exposure as a murderer.

Yet I could not persuade myself to relinquish the key.  If I did so, he would imagine that he had frightened me.  But I had no fear, and I could not bear that he should think I had.

He fired.

My ears sang.  The room was full of a new odour, and a cloud floated reluctantly upwards from the mouth of the revolver.  I sneezed, and then I grew aware that, firing at a distant of two feet, he had missed me.  What had happened to the bullet I could not guess.  He put the revolver down on the table with a groan, and the handle rested on my satchel.

‘My God, Magda!’ he sighed, pushing back his hair with his beautiful hand.