With a desperate wrench she tore free of him. They stood, panting, watching each other for a full minute. Then her grey eyes dilated with horror, for he slowly took a pistol from his pocket, his near-set black eyes, all bloodshot, fastened on her. “You listen to me,” he said brokenly, his great chest heaving with every word,--“I want you because I can’t live without you.... Will you marry me?” “No!” “If you don’t,” he said, “I’ll blow my brains out in your face.” There was a terrible silence. Then he said: “If you leave this room I’ll kill myself.... It’s up to you, now.” Another silence. “Well, why don’t you go?” he said. “I--am going.” She picked up the suitcase and make-up box. Watching him, she began to move slowly toward the door--passed him where he was standing, slowly, never taking her eyes off him. She reached the door. “I swear I will do it!” he shouted. She looked at him coolly over her shoulder. “You are too fond of yourself,” she said. And walked on. CHAPTER XXIX At the head of the stairway Eris, carrying her suitcase and make-up box, encountered Flynn, the voluble door-keeper, coming upstairs. “Miss Odell,” he began, half way up, “the same gentleman that tillyphoned you is downstairs askin’ for you with a taxi-cab. I wouldn’t leave him come up after what the Governor told me. ‘No, sir,’ says I, ‘ye can’t see Miss Odell. I have me orders,’ says I, ‘and I’m door watch here,’ says I, ‘and whin the Governor says to me, “Flynn, do this; Flynn, do that,” be gob it’s meself that does ut!’ Was I right, Miss Odell?” “I couldn’t see any newspaper man now,” she assented, nervously. “So I told Mr. Annan, Miss,” commented the door-keeper, relieving her of her baggage. “Was it _he_ who telephoned? I--I understood it was a _Herald_ man----” She continued on down the stairs, followed volubly by Flynn. Outside the barred gate she saw Annan standing beside a taxi-cab. Flynn opened the wicket. She went out. “I didn’t know it was you,” she said. “They misinformed me. I’m so sorry.” The girl looked white and tired. One shoulder of her frail summer gown was torn to the elbow and there were red bruises on the skin already turning darker. “What is the matter?” he demanded bluntly, retaining the nervous hand she had offered and touching her torn sleeve with the other. She noticed the damage, then, for the first time; the hot colour swept her face. “An accident,” she murmured. “The place is impassable--a jungle of lumber and knocked-down sets.... Will you please drive me home, Barry?” “Where is Mr. Smull?” She lifted her gaze to the man beside her, then calmly turned to Flynn and bade him place her luggage in the taxi. Something in Annan’s eyes had alarmed her. “Is Smull here?” he repeated. She did not answer. An instant vision of Smull’s heavy black pistol and a swift intuition that Smull was capable of using it on anybody except himself,--these thoughts paralysed her tongue.