In thinking otherwise was it that I took that last step to the very bottom of the hell that I had myself created for myself that night.
The rest was as nothing by comparison.

I have said that it was not by act or speech that I added to the sum of my iniquities; and yet it was by both.

First, in that fiercely echoed "We ?" that I hurled at her to strike her from me; then in my precipitate flight alone.
How I stumbled from that room I scarcely know.

The events of the time that followed immediately upon Fifanti's death are all blurred as the impressions of a sick man's dream.
I dimly remember that as she backed away from me until her shoulders touched the wall, that as she stood so, all white and lovely as any snare that Satan ever devised for man's ruin, staring at me with mutely pleading eyes, I staggered forward, avoiding the sight of that dreadful huddle on the floor, over which Busio was weeping foolishly.
As I stepped a sudden moisture struck my stockinged feet.

Its nature I knew by instinct upon the instant, and filled by it with a sudden unreasoning terror, I dashed with a loud cry from the room.
Along the passage and down the dark stairs I plunged until I reached the door of the house.