I sprang upon her on the instant; but not quickly enough to stop her from
hiding the knife. Without a word from me, without a cry from her, I
pinioned her in a chair. With one hand I felt up her sleeve; and there,
where the Dream Woman had hidden the knife, my wife had hidden it--the
knife with the buckhorn handle, that looked like new.
What I felt when I made that discovery I could not realize at the time,
and I can't describe now. I took one steady look at her with the knife in
my hand. "You meant to kill me?" I said.
"Yes," she answered; "I meant to kill you." She crossed her arms over her
bosom, and stared me coolly in the face. "I shall do it yet," she said.
"With that knife."
I don't know what possessed me--I swear to you I am no coward; and yet I
acted like a coward. The horrors got hold of me. I couldn't look at her--I
couldn't speak to her. I left her (with the knife in my hand), and went
out into the night.
There was a bleak wind abroad, and the smell of rain was in the air. The
church clocks chimed the quarter as I walked beyond the last house in the
town. I asked the first policeman I met what hour that was, of which the
quarter past had just struck.
The man looked at his watch, and answered, "Two o'clock." Two in the
morning. What day of the month was this day that had just begun? I
reckoned it up from the date of my mother's funeral.
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