524
PARTISAN REVIEW
For a second she yielded. But then she resisted, fiercely pressing
both fists against his chest. With a laugh he seized her by the back
of the neck and stroked the tender rill under the hair's edge. But
she suddenly evaded him, slipping her smooth head out of his
clumsy hands. At once he gripped her by the shoulders as though in–
sane, met her throat with his whisper-open lips, and let them creep
to her ear. He filled the little shell, tight against the temple, with
his
orders, his wishes, his threats, so strange, so horrifying that she let
him talk as if he were a madman, trying to distract him by pigeon–
clever questions. When this proved of no avail she tried to extricate
herself by pretending to join in the headlong game, and laughing
at his vile suggestions.
-Drink, he ordered, and poured brandy down her throat; she
swallowed part, spit out part while he drew her onto his lap, noticing
with satisfaction that sweat issued from all her pores. He took a long
draught himself and emptied the rest into his wife's blouse.
Half
frightened, half carried away, she screamed like a girl held too
tight at a dance. But then she ripped off the wet blouse and broke
into a sudden blaze, as if the furnace of her insatiable soul had re–
ceived all the spilled oil from the broken household jars, sending a
roar up the chimney.
-What are the French doing, she asked softly and added, with
cunning: See if anybody is listening and if the door is bolted....
-I chased them into bed, he answered like a cuckold who
be–
lieves he has nothing to fear though already betrayed.
Recklessly she shrugged her bare shoulders, slid from his lip and
turned the martial pictures around-Bllicher's Crossing at Caub,
Schill's Officers-which had been facing the wall. With dazzled eyes
she looked at the clouds of smoke and the forest of gleaming swords.
He stepped behind her, glowing with jealousy, and crouched on the
floor. Clasping her from behind, he caught the fall of her body with
his bent knee, and growled:
-I suppose you would like to have him ... pointing at one
of the soldiers whose chest bulged and whose musket was spewing
death.
As
though returning from very far away, she scrutinized her
husb.and's face and found there what she was looking for. He en–
dured her kiss, like the bite of a she-wolf, with bleeding lips, and re-
