The hag, as if wanting him to get a more thorough look at her, stood motionless for a long time in the moonlight. After a while she silently advanced toward the bed, pausing in the middle of the room. Now he could clearly see her previously shadow-covered face. He was met by the fiery glance of big black eyes, wildly brilliant against wrinkled eyelids. But he was most amazed by the expression on the face. That old countenance, furrowed by a system of folds and hollows, seemed doubled up. Ozarski sensed in it a familiar physiognomy, but for the present it escaped his mind. Suddenly, realizing where he was, he unraveled the tangled enigma: the hag was looking at him with a double face – the innkeeper’s and Makryna’s. The repugnant warts spread all over her, the hawk-like nose, the demonic eyes, and the age – belonged to the lecherous old man; on the other hand, the sex (unquestionably a woman’s), the white scar from the middle of the forehead to the eyebrow, and especially the birthmark on the right breast – betrayed Makryna.

Shocked by this discovery, he didn’t lower his gaze from the hag’s magnetic eyes.

Meanwhile, she advanced right up to the bed, and placing one leg along its edge, with the other she rested her big toe on his lips. This happened so unexpectedly that he didn’t even have time to avoid the heavy, overpowering foot. He was gripped by a strange fear. In his burdened chest a nervous heart pounded; his lips, pressed down by the toe of the hag, couldn’t utter a cry. Thus lasted a long, silent moment.

Slowly the shrew, not changing the position of her legs, removed the quilt and started to take off his underclothes. At first Ozarski attempted to defend himself, but feeling her pressure on him, and his will fettered by the fire of her lustful eyes, he surrendered with some kind of terrible joy.

The hag, noticing the change which had overcome him, removed the foot crushing his lips and, sitting on the bed, began a wild, debauched fondling of his body. After several minutes she gained complete control: he quivered from pleasure. An unleashed heat – animalistic, insatiable, primitive – rocked their bodies and entangled them in a titanic embrace. The lustful female threw herself under his body, and humbly, like a young maiden, drew him into her with a craving movement of her thighs.

Ozarski satisfied her. Then she went crazy. She encircled his middle with her strong arms, ensnared his loins with her muscular legs, and began to squeeze him in a terrific hug. He felt a pain at the small of his back and in his chest.

‘Let go! You’re strangling me!’

The terrible embrace didn’t ease up. He thought she would crush his ribs, shatter his chest. Half-conscious, he laid a free hand on a glittering knife lying on the nearby table, pushed it under her arm, and plunged it in.

A hellish double-cry tore apart the quiet of the night: the savage, animalistic roar of a man – and the sharp, piercing wail of a woman. And then silence, absolute silence … .

He felt relief; the snake-like tangles of a noctuid loosened, relaxed; a smooth viper seemed to slide down along the length of his body, eagerly slipping to the ground. He saw nothing, for the moon had hidden itself behind a cloud. His head weighed terribly, his temples pounded loudly … .

Suddenly he jumped up from the bedding and feverishly looked for some matches. He found them, tore them open, and lit a taper. A faint light brightened up the room; no one was there.

He leaned over the bed. The bedding was spread with soot, full of signs of the bodies that had rolled over it; on the pillow there were several large blood stains. Then he saw that his left hand was tightened about a knife spattered with gore up to the handle.

He was seized by a dull dizziness. Staggering, he rushed to the window and opened it; a freezing gust of winter morning air came in and hit him in the face.