Wenk saw her eyes, fluttering like birds shot down in the clear blue ether, glance for a moment beyond and above Mabuse’s eager bent head.... He saw her hands, tearing off their fur gloves, cling white and trembling to Mabuse’s shoulder as she strove to drag him back from his deadly intent. But Mabuse shook the woman off, and raised his hands with mad rage to untie the last noose. He tore undone the first of its fastenings, making Wenk’s body sink deeper, and beat away Wenk’s hands, which were seeking to maintain a grip on the edge of the car, with his closed fists. Then one last defiance of fate, arising from the will to live, lent strength to Wenk’s voice as he shouted in the air, “He is the murderer of Count Told. He made him cheat at cards! He put the razor into his hands that he might cut his throat!” A fist struck at his mouth, and blood spurted from it, yet at this last moment of his life it seemed as if his very blood were tasting the sweetness of a noble spirit. Then a final effort was made to release him from the bond that held him. A fearful weight pressed on his head, rolled over his body to press him downward. The weight of it was immeasurable, black, imbued with the swiftness of a raging storm. But all at once the iron weight was removed. A part of it became detached from the aeroplane, unrecognizable, and sank. Wenk’s hands held the edge of the car as in a vice. The aeroplane hovered and swayed as if drunken with the high clear air. * * * * * This is what had happened: When Count Told’s name rang through the air, as if thrown from measureless space, it seemed to the Countess as if she were awaking from a dream at the bottom of a swamp. Since the night when she had been torn from her husband and chained to Mabuse’s wicked will, she had never spoken his name, nor even thought of it. The memory had crept into her inmost being and hidden itself away, deep in the welter in which her life was inextricably bound. It had been forced there by the diabolic power of Mabuse’s lust for domination, and the wife had suffered it in a kind of subconscious self-defence. Were it not so, she would have been absolutely and entirely without escape from the werwolf. There within her the name had lain and waited and watched until now it arose again to provide her with a way of escape. Wenk’s last words had brought it forth from the subconscious recesses once more. The Countess had received it as a direct weapon against the secret power of this man who had so long taken forcible possession of her will and her entire person. She suddenly came to herself, and all that was frozen within her melted. The gloom and darkness in which she lay bound grew lighter, and it was day within.