Then came one memorable night, riotously wild with wind and rain. With gleaming lamps, at top speed, facing the wrath of conflicting elements battling under a stormy sky, she drove her machine roaring up the avenue. A quick turn of the hand and she stayed it, fuming and whirring like a live thing, before the porch. Contrary to custom, the door was open. Against the light she saw Lionel, and in a moment guessed the inevitable. Leaving the chauffeur to attend to the monster, this Mrs. Frankenstein sprang up the steps and dragged Lionel under the glare of the electric lamp. A look into his face redoubled the beat of her heart. There, sure enough, she saw what she expected to see. "Take me to him," she breathed, still retaining her grip on his arm. "But are you quite prepared? He is in the library, and----" Leah flung the curate away so forcibly that he staggered against the wall. She was out of the hall, she was at the library door, she was in the library itself, and all in two quick-drawn breaths. "Hulloa, Leah," said a well-known voice, in a well-known manner. She did not answer, but stared with a bloodless face, possessed entirely by the devil of hysteria. Then she dropped, without a cry or a word. Like a blood-mare, she had held out to the winning-post, and thus paid the price of victory. CHAPTER XXX There are periods in the growth of a tree when the sap, unable to circulate freely, coagulates into knots and protuberances. Leah had heard some empirical dabbler in science say as much, and recognised it as a truthful symbol of her existence for the twelve months following Jim's return. There was certainly a knot in her life, for somehow, in an unaccountable way, things seemed to be at a standstill. Before intermeddling with criminal matters she had indulged her senses in every possible way, and now that she had receded within the legal limits of action, she was prepared to indulge them again. To her surprise, they did not respond, and she discovered that the nursery stage of enjoyment had been passed. That intermezzo of fierce endeavour, of scheming and fighting, of dancing on the edge of a precipice, and of wandering in perilous ways, had ruined her for untroubled days and comfortable nights. While battling with desperate fortunes she had detested the storm and necessary stress of the encounter; now she longed to set her forces in array once more and dare the worst. The salt had lost its savour, and her vitiated palate demanded pepper--red pepper, hot and biting--to flavour the good things ready for her eating at life's banquet.