She rose and stood up rigid, and all the muscles of her limbs were drawn as though she were a creature stretched upon a rack; for the horror of this which had befallen her seemed to fill the place about her, and leave her no air to breathe nor light to see. "Now!" she cried, "if I would give way--and go mad, as I could but do, for there is naught else left--if I would but give way, that which is I--and has lived but a poor score of years--would be done with for all time. All whirls before me. 'Twas I who struck the blow--and I am a woman--and I could go raving--and cry out and call them in, and point to him, and tell them how 'twas done--all!--all!" She choked, and clutched her bosom, holding its heaving down so fiercely that her nails bruised it through her habit's cloth; for she felt that she had begun to rave already, and that the waves of such a tempest were arising as, if not quelled at their first swell, would sweep her from her feet and engulf her for ever. "That--that!" she gasped--"nay--that I swear I will not do! There was always One who hated me--and doomed and hunted me from the hour I lay 'neath my dead mother's corpse, a new-born thing. I know not whom it was--or why--or how--but 'twas so! I was made evil, and cast helpless amid evil fates, and having done the things that were ordained, and there was no escape from, I was shown noble manhood and high honour, and taught to worship, as I worship now. An angel might so love and be made higher. And at the gate of heaven a devil grins at me and plucks me back, and taunts and mires me, and I fall--on _this_!" She stretched forth her arms in a great gesture, wherein it seemed that surely she defied earth and heaven. "No hope--no mercy--naught but doom and hell," she cried, "unless the thing that is tortured be the stronger. Now--unless Fate bray me small--the stronger I will be!" She looked down at the thing before her. How its stone face sneered, and even in its sneering seemed to disregard her. She knelt by it again, her blood surging through her body, which had been cold, speaking as if she would force her voice to pierce its deadened ear. "Ay, mock!" she said, setting her teeth, "thinking that I am conquered--yet am I not! 'Twas an honest blow struck by a creature goaded past all thought! Ay, mock--and yet, but for one man's sake, would I call in those outside and stand before them, crying: 'Here is a villain whom I struck in madness--and he lies dead! I ask not mercy, but only justice.'" She crouched still nearer, her breath and words coming hard and quick. 'Twas indeed as if she spoke to a living man who heard--as if she answered what he had said. "There would be men in England who would give it me," she raved, whispering. "That would there, I swear! But there would be dullards and dastards who would not. He would give it--he! Ay, mock as thou wilt! But between his high honour and love and me thy carrion _shall_ not come!"