He took it and sat looking into the muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill him.

It slipped through his hand and struck the floor, and there was a report; he sprang into the air, feeling that he had been shot.

But he found himself still alive, with only a burning line along his cheek, such as one of Christine's finger-nails might have left.
He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact that he had got his punishment in the right way, and that his case was not to be dignified into tragedy.
XVIII.
The Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the Dryfooses off on the French steamer.

There was no longer any business obligation on them to be civil, and there was greater kindness for that reason in the attention they offered.

'Every Other Week' had been made over to the joint ownership of March and Fulkerson, and the details arranged with a hardness on Dryfoos's side which certainly left Mrs.March with a sense of his incomplete regeneration.