.. how should he know her in that dreary garret, in
those joyless habiliments? He would as soon known his Own in that
crimson-bodiced, wire-framed dummy by the window yonder!...

Her fingers clutched at the tawdry mercerised silk of her blouse. There
was a rip, and her arms and throat were free. She panted as she tugged
at something that gave with a short "click-click," as of steel
fastenings; something fell against the fender.... These also.... She tore
at them, and kicked them as they lay about her feet as leaves lie about
the trunk of a tree in autumn....

"Ah!"

And as she stood there, as if within the screen of a spectrum that
deepened to the band of red, her eyes fell on the leopard-skin at her
feet. She caught it up, and in doing so saw purple grapes--purple
grapes that issued from the mouth of a paper bag on the table. With the
dappled pelt about her she sprang forward. The juice spurted through them
into the mass of her loosened hair. Down her body there was a spilth of
seeds and pulp. She cried hoarsely aloud.

"Once more--oh, answer me! Tell me my name!"

Ed's steps were heard on the oilclothed portion of the staircase.

"My name--oh, my name!" she cried in an agony of suspense.... "Oh, they
will not wait for me! They have lighted the torches--they run up and down
the shore with torches--oh, cannot you see me?..."

Suddenly she dashed to the chair on which the litter of linings and
tissue-paper lay. She caught up a double handful and crammed them on the
fire. They caught and flared. There was a call upon the stairs, and the
sound of somebody mounting in haste.

"Once--once only--my name!"

The soul of the Bacchante rioted, struggled to escape from her eyes. Then
as the door was flung open, she heard, and gave a terrifying shout of
recognition.

"I hear--I almost hear--but once more.... IO! _Io, Io, Io!_"

Ed, in the doorway, stood for one moment agape; the next, ignorant of the
full purport of his own words--ignorant that though man may come
westwards he may yet bring his worship with him--ignorant that to make
the Dream the Reality and the Reality the Dream is Heaven's dreadfullest
favour--and ignorant that, that Edge once crossed, there is no return to
the sanity and sweetness and light that are only seen clearly in the
moment when they are lost for ever--he had dashed down the stairs crying
in a voice hoarse and high with terror:

"She's mad! She's mad!"

THE ACCIDENT

I

The st