"Very well, then," she answered quietly, "our conversation can stop where it is. You will excuse me, Mr. Bennett, if I leave you. I have my work to do." Bennett was standing between her and the door. He did not move. Very gravely he said: "Don't. Please don't bring it--to that." Lloyd flashed a look at him, her eyes wide, exclaiming: "You don't mean--you don't dare--" "I tell you again that I mean to carry my point." "And I tell you that I shall _not_ leave my patient." Bennett met her glance for an instant, and, holding her gaze with his, answered but two words. Speaking in a low voice and with measured slowness, he said: "You--shall." There was a silence. The two stood there, looking straight into one another's eyes, their mutual opposition at its climax. The seconds began to pass. The conflict between the man's aggression and the woman's resistance reached its turning point. Before another word should be spoken, before the minute should pass, one of the two must give ground. And then it was that Lloyd felt something breakdown within her, something to which she could not put a name. A mysterious element of her character, hitherto rigid and intact, was beginning at last to crumble. Somewhere a breach had been opened; somewhere the barrier had been undermined. The fine steadfastness that was hers, and that she had so dearly prized, her strength in which she had gloried, her independence, her splendid arrogant self-confidence and conscious power seemed all at once to weaken before this iron resolve that shut its ears and eyes, this colossal, untutored, savage intensity of purpose. And abruptly her eyes were opened, and the inherent weakness of her sex became apparent to her. Was it a mistake, then? Could not a woman be strong? Was her strength grafted upon elemental weakness--not her individual weakness, but the weakness of her sex, the intended natural weakness of the woman? Had she built her fancied impregnable fortress upon sand? But habit was too strong. For an instant, brief as the opening and shutting of an eye, a vision was vouchsafed to her, one of those swift glimpses into unplumbed depths that come sometimes to the human mind in the moments of its exaltation, but that are gone with such rapidity that they may not be trusted. For an instant Lloyd saw deep down into the black, mysterious gulf of sex--down, down, down where, immeasurably below the world of little things, the changeless, dreadful machinery of Life itself worked, clashing and resistless in its grooves. It was a glimpse fortunately brief, a vision that does not come too often, lest reason, brought to the edge of the abyss, grow giddy at the sight and, reeling, topple headlong. But quick the vision passed, the gulf closed, and she felt the firm ground again beneath her feet. "I shall not," she cried.