Now, he was standing in front of the portrait again, but this time he had a weapon in his hands. He later recalled wishing that the weapon was a knife, so that he could slash and slice at the canvas, but the poker was satisfactorily heavy and with it he began hitting the painting with as much force as he could summon.

He was not aiming at Jane’s face, but at the lower part of her body, dressed in its lying virginal white gown, just below the place where her hands cradled the ridiculous manikin. And, little by little, Jane’s gown was rent and torn and what Ross expected to see was her naked torso revealed in all its beauty and in all its shame. But the body did not appear. He kept smashing harder and harder with the poker at the canvas, but there was nothing behind the gown except a square of wall, and, when he saw this, Ross thought that this wall was a perfect representation of Jane Adeane’s heart, so terrifying in its hardness, which had never yielded to him and never would. He began cursing Jane out loud, screaming that she was inhuman, that the abomination in her hands had been given more love than he would ever receive from her and that he hated her now, hated her with a loathing so strong that it would never leave him. He might live to be a hundred years old, but his detestation of Jane Adeane would last that hundred years and beyond …

Suddenly, she was at his side. She was crying out for him to stop his assault on the portrait. He saw her close up, now, her hair unkempt, her face oily, her eyes pools of venom. And the stink of her! As long as he lived he would never forget that fish smell of his once-beloved woman, caught in the act of her foul betrayal. He thrust her away from him, letting the poker fall. He pushed her against the wall. She was strong and she resisted him, but he told her she could not win against him, she could never win! For everything was at an end now. His loathing of her was complete. There would be no marriage. There would be no future. There would only be this last moment …

He tugged her towards him then pushed her violently back, so that her head hit the wall. In his delirium of pain and anger, he half expected the skull to break in two, but it did not break and Jane kept crying out and resisting and resisting, but he knew he could not allow this unbearable resistance, it had to be put down once and for all, so he pulled her towards him for a second time. Once more, he rammed her head against the wall. And now he felt her fall. All the resistance went from her and she lay unconscious at his feet, with blood seeping from the back of her head. And he thought, this is what I have wanted – ever since that day in a tea room when she rejected my proposal – I have wanted her lying before me, helpless and at my mercy and now, there she lies.