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Suddenly she felt that the interior of the room was becoming darker, that another nightmare was about to overtake her. But this time she determined to see it with her eyes open. The thought frightened her, and her heart began to skip beats. But she calmed her mind and persuaded herself that she was prone to imagine things. The wick of the lamp at her bedside was spent, and the light was flickering. Climbing out of bed, she turned the wick high.

Quickly the room brightened up, but the light of the lamp was blurred in colors of orange, and this increased her uneasiness. By the same light Tokiko looked again at her husband's face, and was startled to see that his eyes were still fixed on the same spot on the ceiling, not having changed position even a fraction of an inch!

"What could he possibly be thinking about?" she asked herself with a shiver. Although she felt extremely uneasy, hers was even more a feeling of intense hatred of his attitude. Her hatred again awakened all her inherent desires to torment him—to make him suffer.

Suddenly, without any warning, she threw herself upon her husband's bed, grabbed his shoulders with her large hands, and began to shake him furiously.

Startled by this sudden violence, the crippled man began to tremble. Biting his lip, he stared at her fiercely.

"Are you angry? Why do you look at me like that?" Tokiko asked sarcastically. "It's no use getting angry, you know! You're quite at my mercy."

Sunaga could not reply, but the words that might have come to his lips showed from his penetrating eyes.

"Your eyes are mad!" Tokiko shrieked. "Don't stare at me like that!"

On a sudden impulse she thrust her fingers roughly into his eyes, shouting: "Now try to stare if you can!"

The cripple struggled desperately, his torso writhing and twisting, and his intense suffering finally gave him the strength to lift his trunk and send her sprawling backward.

Quickly Tokiko regained her balance and turned to resume her attack. But suddenly she stopped. . . . Horror of horrors! From both her husband's eyes blood was spurting; his face, twitching in pain, had the pallor of a boiled octopus.

Tokiko was paralyzed with fear. She had cruelly deprived her husband of his only window to the outside world. What was left to him now? Nothing, absolutely nothing. . .just his mass of ghastly flesh, in total darkness.

Stumbling downstairs, she staggered out into the dark night barefooted. Passing through the back gate of the garden, she rushed out onto the village road, running as though in a nightmare pursued by specters—fast and yet seeming not to move.

Eventually she reached her destination—the lone house of a country doctor. After hearing her hysterical story, the doctor accompanied her back to the cottage.

In the room her husband was still struggling violently, suffering the tortures of hell. The doctor had often heard of the limbless man, but had never seen him before; he was shocked beyond words by the gruesome sight of the cripple. After giving him an injection to relieve his pain, he dressed the blinded eyes and then hurried away, not even asking for any explanation of the "accident,"

By the time Lieutenant Sunaga stopped struggling it was already dawn. Caressing his chest tenderly, Tokiko shed big drops of tears and implored: "Forgive me, my darling. Please forgive me."

The lump of flesh was stricken with fever, its red face swollen and its heart beating rapidly.

Tokiko did not leave the bedside of her patient all day, not even to take any food. She kept squeezing out wet cloths for his head; and in the brief intervals she wrote "Forgive me" again and again on her husband's chest with her finger. She was utterly unconscious of the passing of time.

By evening the patient's temperature showed a slight drop, and his breathing seemed to return to normal. Tokiko surmised he must also have regained consciousness, so again she wrote "Forgive me" on his chest. The lump of flesh, however, made no attempt to make any kind of a reply. Although he had lost his