As she supported him his teeth began to rattle, not as the teeth of the living chatter from fear, but as the teeth of a dead man might rattle when he is jolted in his coffin.

For a minute she felt the madness of her panic pass from her pulses to her brain, and her terror of him turned her as cold as the sleet-covered iron railing against which she leaned.

A cowardly impulse tempted her to desert him and run for her life, to seek shelter behind bolted doors, to leave him there alone to freeze to death at her gate.
"Gabriella, I'm afraid," he whined, clinging to her arm.

"I'm afraid, Gabriella.

You can't let go of me!" An unspeakable loathing swept over her; his very touch seemed contamination; and while she turned toward the gate, she knew that every fibre of her flesh, every quiver of her nerves, revolted against the thing she was doing.