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withdrawn.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