He was still suffering too much from his treatment at the hands of women to be easily rid of the exceeding bitterness he felt when he thought of them.
His dogs leapt at him from their kennels beside the path. He caressed them, and unchained them, and played his way with them back to the other side of the house. Then he began to pace back and forth on the path, stopping every now and again to look up at the trees patterned against the moonlit sky, or to peep through his cutting at the dull sheen on the river.
As he went up the steps some time later he felt something crunch under his feet, and with a little shudder stooped to see what he had done. Making a face, he scraped the unpleasant thing out of sight with his shoe. Then he grieved because he had crushed the life out of an insignificant insect, and took a moment to wonder what pathetic domestic tragedy in the history of beetles would result from his inadvertent clumsiness.
