The doctor was in a highly excitable and savage state. The meeting with this man, who had so long called her his own, had fired his blood and inflamed him as if he had been a bull in the arena transfixed by a javelin. He unconsciously lowered his head as if for attack, and his imagination ran riot, thirsting to satisfy his hate and revenge. It seemed to him as if a tumour had suddenly burst within him, scattering its evil and offensive discharge everywhere, and he allowed himself to bathe in its stream. When he re-entered his house he went straight to the room in which the Countess was confined. It was in a secluded corner of the villa. The only light there was came from a round window in its arched and richly decorated dome. The Countess arose as he came in. She was white as the sheets upon her bed. She went towards him, saying, “Something happened to me in the night--something of which I was wholly unconscious. What have you been doing to me?” “Nothing but what you allowed me to do!” Then the woman trembled so that she sank down to the ground, raising her glance to his like an animal that has been shot down, and crying in horror, “You devil! oh, you devil!” “That name pleases me,” said Mabuse. “I consider it flattering. It is, without your realizing it, a caress. Next time you will call me Lucifer, for I shall bring you light!” The Countess, lying in a heap on the floor, broke into passionate sobs, crying in the midst of her anguish, “Where is my husband?” Then she saw that at the question Mabuse made a gesture, so indifferent and trivial that she felt her painful anguished appeal was no more than a drop of dew vanishing in the sand, and as hopeless to look for. And her downcast broken heart asked itself whether this man could indeed be so powerful that everything went down before his will--that what she and others before her had been must be brought to nought? Once again she must yield herself to the twofold stream within. It bore the most secret and hitherto unsuspected currents along with it, and her tortured imagination gave them full play. Must not that which her blood sought to reveal to her be true? She could not separate herself from this new world of feeling. Resist and inveigh against it as she might, she could yet not tear it from her. The man stood silent before her, and his silence seemed to threaten her. She thought that by a word of her own she could destroy this threatening attitude of his, but she found no power to say anything more than to repeat helplessly, “Where is my husband?” Then Mabuse, silently and roughly, turned away.