I turned and strode out. A few times in the trenches I had been the victim of this rage to kill—and I had killed. How many I killed at one time or another I now couldn’t tell you. I saw too red to keep the count. All I know is that I have stuck my bayonet into heart after heart, and have dashed out brains with the butt end of my rifle. It is all red before me still—a great splash of blood on the memory. But I had got the habit. In a rage like this to kill some one had become an instinct. I could not have believed that the impulse would have pursued me into civil life; but there it was. Having flung open the door of my apartment, I marched straight for the “kitchingette.” Lovey was seated on a stool beside the tiny gas-range, polishing one of my boots. The boot was like a boxing-glove on his left hand, while he held the brush suspended in his right, looking up at me with the piteous appeal of a rabbit pleading for its life. His weakness held me back from striking him, but it didn’t stem my words. “Who the devil, you old snake, gave you the right to interfere in my affairs?” He simply looked up at me, the boot on one hand, the brush suspended in the other. His lower lip trembled—his arms began to tremble—but he made no attempt to defend himself. “What have you been saying?” I demanded. “Speak, can’t you?” But he couldn’t. I caught him by the collar and dragged him to his feet. He had just the strength to stand on them, though his limp hands continued to hold the boot and the brush. “Now are you going to speak? Or shall I kick you out?” “You’d kick me out, Slim?” The mildness of his voice maddened me. “By God, I would!” The brush and the boot fell with a dull clatter to the floor. “Then I’d better go.” He looked about him helplessly till his eyes fell on the old felt hat hanging on a peg. I watched him as he took it down and crammed it on his head. There was another helpless searching as if he didn’t know what he was looking for before he spied an old gnarled stick in a corner. Taking that in his hand, he fumbled his way into the living-room. By the time I had followed him I was beginning to relent. I had not really meant to have him go, but I was not ready as yet to call him back. What Cantyre must have thought of me, what Regina must have thought of me, in egging so poor a creature on to say what I wouldn’t say myself, roused me as to a more intense degree I used to be roused on hearing of Belgian women treated with the last indignities, and Canadian soldiers crucified. Had I stopped to consider I would have seen that Regina didn’t believe it, and that Cantyre believed it only as far as it gave an outlet to his complicated inward sufferings; but I didn’t stop to consider. Perhaps I, too, was seeking an outlet for something repressed. At any rate, I let the poor old fellow go. “What about your things?” I asked, before he had reached the door.