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in fragments, and the sheets were in ribands. Mildred had
made a slit large enough to put her hand into the pillow and
had scattered the feathers about the room. She had jabbed
a knife into the blankets. On the dressing-table were pho-
tographs of Philip’s mother, the frames had been smashed
and the glass shivered. Philip went into the tiny kitchen.
Everything that was breakable was broken, glasses, pud-
ding-basins, plates, dishes.
It took Philip’s breath away. Mildred had left no letter,
nothing but this ruin to mark her anger, and he could imag-
ine the set face with which she had gone about her work. He
went back into the sitting-room and looked about him. He
was so astonished that he no longer felt angry. He looked
curiously at the kitchen-knife and the coal-hammer, which
were lying on the table where she had left them. Then his
eye caught a large carving-knife in the fireplace which had
been broken. It must have taken her a long time to do so
much damage. Lawson’s portrait of him had been cut cross-
ways and gaped hideously. His own drawings had been
ripped in pieces; and the photographs, Manet’s Olympia
and the Odalisque of Ingres, the portrait of Philip IV, had
been smashed with great blows of the coal-hammer. There
were gashes in the table-cloth and in the curtains and in the
two arm-chairs. They were quite ruined. On one wall over
the table which Philip used as his desk was the little bit of
Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. Mildred had
always hated it.
‘If it’s a rug it ought to go on the floor,’ she said, ‘and it’s a
dirty stinking bit of stuff, that’s all it is.’

Of Human Bondage