She stopped at last, panting, striving to keep back the passionate words of entreaty that still formed, crushing them down in a maddened consciousness of their impotence. She stared wildly, feeling only a still stubborn determination. Ewing would soon come--yet it seemed that she had no resource save appeal. She felt this and raged against it, striding away from Teevan across the room. For the first time in her gentle life she was feeling the sensation she thought a man must feel in fighting. She had an impulse to strike blindly, to wound, to beat down with her hands. Without volition she measured her antagonist and wondered deliriously if she could throw him to the floor. He seemed so small to her, and hateful--hateful and small enough to kill. She closed her eyes to shut him out, but opened them again quickly, for everything rocked in the darkness. She incessantly pictured this creature, naked in his poverty of manhood, smiling up at Ewing, the friendly one, who stood bowed down, blighted and broken of heart. Sometimes Ewing had his arm over his face, and she felt that he would never take it away--move on thus forever, like a figure in an anguished dream. Constantly beside her thoughts, like a little refrain, went the remembrance that she had brought him there, torn him from his youth and splendid dreams to give him to this--she the betrayer! The fever waxed, the tortured blood trampled in her head like hurrying hoofs. But she could not strike Teevan, extinguish him with blows, and she set herself again to play the beggar. And she could not beg across the room. Bit by bit she crept to the entreated one, her great eyes full of flame and fear, and laid pitiful hands on his shoulder. Still the shaken head met her, the icy smile, the dulled eyes. "No good talking, Nell! No good! You mortify me, my word you do. Demand something great, something to task a man; ask me----" Again he picked up the dagger with a return to that extravagant air of the sighing gallant. "--here, I point it to my heart, see! A mere thrust--your beautiful hand is still equal to it. I'd be proud of the blow. I'd give you my life gladly--but not my self-respect. You're too stunning a woman, Nell, to waste yourself on that cub--a woman to die for indeed. You were never finer than at this moment." In the excess of his emotion he threw an arm about her waist. She started back but he held her. "Never finer, Nell, on my soul--too fine for that damned----"