Andria clutched Heriot’s arm. “She’s right!” she cried. “Come! See my room. I left a light there, and now it’s dark!” “I’ll break the crazy brute’s neck!” said Heriot furiously. “Let go my arm, please!” To his anger, she was strong as he. “Not without a revolver,” she said imperiously. “Have you no sense? You can’t do anything but get killed--and then I’m gone, too. Come!” Even in his rage Heriot saw she was right. He was in no trim to fight a madman, with no weapon but his hands. In utter silence he ran with her up the lighted stairs and into the first room they came to. There was a lamp burning, for it was Egerton’s sitting-room, and by his orders never dark, even in his absence. But as they entered it they heard pattering footsteps on their trail. “Stop!” Andria caught Heriot as he would have shut the door. “We daren’t. He might get in at Beryl.” She seized a hard-stuffed bolster from a corner, and, before he could stop her, had sent it twice through the window, with a crash and fall of splintered glass. There was a veranda outside, but no jalousies; nothing to keep an evil thing imprisoned. With an irresistible force she dragged Heriot behind a table, whose cloth reached the ground, and made him crouch there beside her. His arm felt like iron under her fingers. He was waiting for a fight, and saw nothing in her breaking the window but an attempt to fly that way, quickly abandoned as useless. The hurrying, relentless steps came in, stopped. Then, with a snarling cry of wordless rage, their strange enemy saw the open window. Like a flash, he bounded to it, through it; and Heriot, quicker than he had ever moved in his life, leaped after him. Andria pointed to a heavy chest of drawers. “That!” she cried. “Keep him out!” and, somehow, the two moved the heavy thing across the window. From outside, without a purchase, it would have taken a Sandow to move it; but the two, with one consent, moved quickly from the room. Heriot shut and locked the heavy door behind them, rejoicing in the iron clamps on the solid wood, but marveling no longer. “How did he get in?” cried Andria; she leaned against the wall, pale and trembling. “Come back to Beryl. It’s all right now.” “Yes,” but he did not move. “Turn round,” he said authoritatively; “let me see your neck! Do you know that brute bit you?” His whole manner utterly changed, and he laid a hand on her shoulder, where her white dressing-gown was torn to ribbons. He felt a shudder run through her. “I didn’t--feel it!” she said jerkily. “I was so frightened for Beryl.” Heriot’s face was dark with shame. “My God!” he muttered as he saw the deep marks of teeth in the nape of her neck. “I ought to be kicked. Mrs. Erle, I have to beg your pardon a thousand times. I’ve behaved like a beastly cad. I--do you know, it’s all my fault?” “Is it deep? Will it be poisoned?” She took no heed of his words, and he saw that at last there was terror in her face.