Driven to the deed by desperation, goaded to it by insult and injury, tried beyond all power of human endurance, she had taken the man's life.

This fact was all he could grasp, all he could comprehend.

It shut down about him like a great blackness.

In the keen agony of that moment of comprehension Winston recalled how she had once confessed temptation to commit the deed; how she had even openly threatened it in a tempest of sudden passion, if this man should ever seek her again.

He had done so, and she had redeemed her pledge.