Naturally her eyes went to her husband, her mind to the horror in which she had held him then; and with a kind of shock--perhaps because the last few minutes had shown him in a new light--she compared her old opinion of him with that which, much as she feared him, she now entertained.
This afternoon, if ever, within the last few hours, if at all, he had acted in a way to justify that horror and that opinion.

He had treated her--brutally; he had insulted and threatened her, had almost struck her.
And yet--and yet Madame felt that she had moved so far from the point which she had once occupied that the old attitude was hard to understand.
Hardly could she believe that it was on this man, much as she still dreaded him, that she had looked with those feelings of repulsion.
She was still gazing at him with eyes which strove to see two men in one, when he turned from the window.

Absorbed in thought, she had forgotten her occupation, and stood, the towel suspended in her half-dried hands.
Before she knew what he was doing he was at her side; he bade the woman hold the bowl, and he rinsed his hands.

Then he turned, and without looking at the Countess, he dried his hands on the farther end of the towel which she was still using.
She blushed faintly.

A something in the act, more intimate and more familiar than had ever marked their intercourse, set her blood running strangely.