The Stratagem and Other Stories

len Bridge was heavenly music beside that! The face of Calvin (even) as he gloated over the burning of Servetus would have turned pitiful had he heard it, so perfectly did it express quintessence of damnation. Now then my husband's thought seemed to have changed places with the other. It was below, within, withdrawn. said to myself, “He is dead!” Then came Ar- thur's thought, “I had better pretend to be mad. It will save her, perhaps; and it will be a change. I shall pre- tend I have killed her with an axe. Damn it! I hope she is not listening.” I was now thoroughly awake, and told the driver to get home quickly. “I hope she is killed in the motor; I hope she is smashed into a million pieces. O God! hear my one prayer! let an Anarchist throw a bomb and smash Magdalen into a million pieces! espe- cially the brain! and the brain first. O God! my first and last prayer: smash Magdalen into a million pieces!” The horror of this thought was my conviction—then and now—that it represented perfect sanity and coher- ence of thought. For I dreaded utterly to think what such words might imply. At the door of the sick-room I was met by the male nurse, who asked me not to enter. Uncontrollably, I asked, “Is he dead?” and though Arthur lay absolutely senseless on the bed I read the answering thought “Dead!” silently pronounced in such tones of mockery, horror, cynicism and despair as I never thought to hear. There was a something or somebody who suffered infi- nitely, and yet who gloated infinitely upon that very suf- fering. And that something was a veil between me and Arthur. The hissing breath recommenced; Arthur seem to be trying to express himself—the self I knew. He managed to articulate feebly, “Is that the police? Let me get out of the house! The police are coming for me. I killed Magda- len with an axe.” The symptoms of delirium began to appear. “I killed Magdalen” he muttered a dozen times, than changing to “Magdalen with” again and again; the