He turned, with a visible effort. Until now he had been lying almost upon his face. The light came obscured from the window, but as I bent forward I realized with a thrill of what extraordinary physical endurance that slight body was capable. The right sleeve of his pyjamas had been torn down--it seemed at one single rip--and the edges of the flannel were caked and sodden with blood. As he threw open the jacket with the other hand I saw two long parallel scratches of the same depth running transversely across his chest. My first act was to draw the curtain aside. He lay there blinking at me in the full light, watchful to see what change my face betrayed. "What you think, eh?" "I think," I said quietly, "that the sooner that dog is shot the better." I made a movement to draw the jacket down, but at the touch of my hand on his shoulder he winced for the first time. "I must have warm water," I said. "I suppose you are not alone here?" Almost as I spoke a woman came into the room by a second door; evidently his wife. She was young, and her face would have been noticeably beautiful but for its expressionlessness. She had deep eyes, well-moulded features, and a very clear pallid complexion, but her whole appearance suggested a slatternliness, evinced in the tumbled silk wrapper, the carelessly combed-back hair. I think I have never seen a woman, least of all in any crisis, look so utterly stupid and bewildered. Her eyes were pink about the edges, where powder had been hastily dabbed to hide recent tear-marks. I imagined that her first impulse in any emergency would be to weep. "Have you warm water in the house?" "I'll get it." She disappeared toward the kitchen, and I followed her in. I wanted for the moment to be out of range of the man on the couch, and I thought it would give her a chance to say something to me herself of what had happened. She took up a bowl haphazard from the dresser, put it down again and took another, always with the scurrying half-frightened movement with which she had entered the room; went finally through a doorway into what appeared to be an outer kitchen to fetch the water. There I heard another woman's voice, clear-cut, decisive, with what seemed an undertone of forced cheerfulness to it. Scraps of a conversation reached me while I waited. "They won't send it up. I'll have to go down later. And Scholl will let us have bread if I fetch it. I thought I'd better bring three now." "Mary, it's awful!" "Did that new man get here?" Mrs. Lessing's voice was discreetly dropped, drowned by the accompanying splash of water from a kettle. But I heard the other say: "Is he any good?" "Mary, sh-h!"