It was a sound inarticulate but
full of meaning; and following it there came a rending and tearing
within his breast. He twisted his fingers together, and the joints of
his hands and arms cracked. On his forehead the perspiration stood
out in small pearly drops. He looked round wildly. Above the shapeless
darkness of the forest undergrowth rose the treetops with their high
boughs and leaves standing out black on the pale sky--like fragments
of night floating on moonbeams. Under his feet warm steam rose from the
heated earth. Round him there was a great silence.
He was looking round for help. This silence, this immobility of his
surroundings seemed to him a cold rebuke, a stern refusal, a cruel
unconcern. There was no safety outside of himself--and in himself there
was no refuge; there was only the image of that woman. He had a sudden
moment of lucidity--of that cruel lucidity that comes once in life to
the most benighted. He seemed to see what went on within him, and was
horrified at the strange sight. He, a white man whose worst fault till
then had been a little want of judgment and too much confidence in the
rectitude of his kind! That woman was a complete savage, and .
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