She looked dumbly at Annan. The stillness of his drawn face terrified her. “Barry, come with me----” “Wait a moment,” he said, but she caught his hands desperately. “Help me,” she whispered, “I need you. I tell you I need you----” “I’m going to help you.” “Barry! You will destroy me!” She meant that he would destroy himself, but intuition shaped her speech. “I want you to take me home,” she said.... “It is the first thing I ever asked of you. Will you do it?” “Could you wait till I--speak--to Smull?” “No. Take me _now_!” He hesitated. She had clasped his arm. Her weight on it was heavy; her face had grown deadly pale. He looked at her closely; looked down at her torn sleeve. “Is--is it anything that _he_ did?” he demanded harshly. She put out one hand blindly, reaching for the cab door; wrenched it open; sagged heavily on his arm. He almost lifted her into the vehicle; and she crumpled up in the corner, her eyes closing. Annan spoke to the driver, cast a quick, grim look at the gate, then turned and jumped into the cab. “Now,” he said, drawing her head to his shoulder, “we won’t talk until we get home. If you feel faint we can stop at a chemist’s. Lie quietly, dear.” She lay against his shoulder, perfectly inert--so still that, at moments, he leaned over to see her face, fearing she had fainted. Neither uttered a word. His thoughts had made glimmering slits of his eyes and had set the hard muscles working around his jaws. But all the girl thought of was to get him away from that heavy black pistol and from the man whose neck had swollen red behind the ears. For suddenly in that moment when she had seen that terrifying expression on Annan’s face, a new and vital truth had flashed clear as crystal in her brain. She saw it; saw through it; knew it for Truth. With her, Truth was always final. It settled everything for her in whom no tiniest seed of self-deception ever had germinated. And Eris knew now that whatever became of her career, this man beside her, who was her lover, was something more, too. He was a care. He was a responsibility. He was something to be defended; something to be guided. For in that instant of fear in his behalf her whole being responded with passionate solicitude. Now she was beginning to comprehend that this solicitude for him must always be hers while life endured; that the overwhelming instinct to defend, protect, guide the man who must always be a boy for her, dominated all else; and would always rule her every thought and motive; her every plan, every action. She was beginning to understand that she must have her way with him as a mother with her son; that, to do so, she must contrive, scheme, prepare, foresee, and above all, love. And, above everything, even love,--if truly in her life this man had become the passion paramount--she must be prepared to give. And supreme, even above love and above giving, she must give up!