He had the pleasure of seeing her wince, as the iron of his words entered into her soul. Her calm deserted her; his words had a paralysing hypnotic effect, she saw herself stripped and naked in a cold world inimical to her desolate state. Trembling with rage, she felt herself beaten, crushed by the power that circumstances and the law put into her husband's hands, and that he used like a bludgeon. Despairingly she searched her mind for any fact that she could turn to her advantage and found none. She felt herself sinking helplessly in the quicksand. "I hate you!" she cried with all the intensity of her being. "I hate you! May God deal with you as you have dealt with me!" "God is not a silly woman,"--he used the insulting word _femmina_. A smile curled his lips, for her expression of hatred was the cry of the weak creature driven to the wall. She had defied him, she had called him "ludicrous"? Well, he had sworn to punish her, and punish her he would. Fate had placed her at his mercy. He sauntered jauntily to the door, his thumbs in his armholes; she, leaning on the table, speechless with hatred, followed him with burning eyes. As the door closed behind him, she sank to a chair, and falling forward, buried her face in her arms, in an attitude of utter despair. One thought possessed her mind; she must get away, she must escape somehow, anyhow; this life was intolerable. Then from the depths of her inner consciousness rose the image of Angelescu--she would see him, she would ask him to help her. He would not refuse,--had he not said he would always be at her service? Should she write, or should she go in person? She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the long dining-room, her hands clasped, twisting and untwisting her fingers. To and fro, to and fro, like a caged lioness she went, living over in her mind day by day the Calvary of the five years of her marriage. The sense of the oppression of it grew like the rising tide, engulfing prudence, common sense, even the thought of her children, leaving only the wild uncontrollable longing for freedom. Free! She flung her head back and stretched out her arms. Almost she felt the salt kiss of the home-fjord on her face, she offered herself to the buffeting of the strong sea-wind, her lungs inhaled with rapture the balsam of the firs, the wild singing of the gale filled her ears. A mist rose before her eyes, she soared on imaginary wings to undreamt of heights.