next train I went back.

XII

My wife had, of course, discovered our secret departure from the house.
She had been drinking. She was in a fury of passion. The dinner in the
kitchen was flung under the grate; the cloth was off the parlor table.
Where was the knife?

I was foolish enough to ask for it. She refused to give it to me. In the
course of the dispute between us which followed, I discovered that there
was a horrible story attached to the knife. It had been used in a
murder--years since--and had been so skillfully hidden that the
authorities had been unable to produce it at the trial. By help of some of
her disreputable friends, my wife had been able to purchase this relic of
a bygone crime. Her perverted nature set some horrid unacknowledged value
on the knife. Seeing there was no hope of getting it by fair means, I
determined to search for it, later in the day, in secret. The search was
unsuccessful. Night came on, and I left the house to walk about the
streets. You will understand what a broken man I was by this time, when I
tell you I was afraid to sleep in the same room with her!

Three weeks passed. Still she refused to give up the knife; and still that
fear of sleeping in the same room with her possessed me. I walked about at
night, or dozed in the parlor, or sat watching by my mother's bedside.
Before the end of the first week in the new month, the worst misfortune of
all befell me--my mother died. It wanted then but a short time to my
birthday. She had longed to live till that day. I was present at her
death. Her last words in this world were addressed to me. "Don't go back,
my son--don't go back!"

I was obliged to go back, if it was only to watch my wife. In the last
days of my mother's illness she had spitefully added a sting to my grief
by declaring she would assert her right to attend the funeral. In spite of
all that I could do or say, she held to her word. On the day appointed for
the burial she forced herself, inflamed and shameless with drink, into my
presence, and swore she would walk in the funeral procession to my
mother's grave.

This last insult--after all I had gone through already--was more than I
could endure. It maddened me. Try to make allowances for a man beside
himself. I struck her.

The instant the blow was dealt, I repented it. She crouched down, silent,
in a corner of the room, and eyed me steadily. It was a look that cooled
my hot blood in an instant. There was no time