Kino gives Juana a beating when she tries to throw the pearl back in the sea. A "rage surge(s) in Kino...and his brain (is) red with anger when he hears his wife get up in the darkness of the night and take the pearl from its hiding place. He follows Juana down to the water, and just as she raises her arm to hurl the pearl into the sea, he leaps at her and "catch(es) her arm and wrench(es) the pearl from her...he (strikes) her in the face with his clenched fist and she (falls) among the boulders, and he kick(s) her in the side".
Juana, on her part, just stares at him "with wide unfrightened eyes, like a sheep before the butcher". She had known he would be angry because she had suggested throwing the pearl away the night before, and he had said no, emphatically stating, "I am a man", and vowing to fight for what was his. Juana had known that "there was murder in him, and it was all right, she had accepted it, and she would not resist or even protest". To Juana, Kino's stubbornness and rage are part of what makes him a man, "half insane and half god", and although she "might be puzzled by (the) differences between man and woman, she knew them and accepted them and needed them". So, after Kino has finished venting his anger and has left in disgust, she drags herself up painfully and follows him (Chapter 5).
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