She knew what he wanted now. She let him get almost to the drawer with its brass knobs, her eyes and his locked all the time. She saw his face change, glimmer with hope, relief. Then she was before him, with the table at her back. As he had advanced slowly, with his studied attempt at casualness, so now he retreated before her, while she closed the distance between them. It was like some ghastly rehearsal, carried out with utter absorption, for some momentous event that was set for the future. It was so deliberate, so mechanical in its studied advance and retreat. Then at last the wall was against the man’s shoulder blades. The touch of the unyielding timber seemed to turn his limbs to water. His knees gave, and he had difficulty propping his body upright. He raised his arms before his face in a weak defensive gesture. Hagar said, “Yo’ rattlesnake! Yo’ would be dead now ’cept fuh me--an’ now--my own gal Lissa----” Then, after a pause, “_You!_” The man found voice in a screech. It was so weak that it scarcely filled the little room--at its peak it plunged suddenly into silence. * * * * * Mamba wanted to be going. She wanted to get Lissa away from that horrible place, back into the ordered peace of streets and houses. But Hagar did not come. Why couldn’t the woman hurry and let them get to the automobile and away? She put the girl, who was quiet at last, out of her arms and started back to the shack. The door was open, and the draught played with the candle flame, peopling the room with lurching shadows and half lights. The old woman entered, with Lissa peering fearfully over her shoulder. Hagar stood with her back to them, her arms hanging straight and long at her sides, her bullet head thrust forward. Her huge shoulders flung a black arch of shadow over half of the wall before her. Bluton lay in a huddle at her feet. His head was twisted at a preposterous angle. The yellow of his face had gone a dark purple, and the candle flame was flung back in two cold high lights from his wide, unblinking eyes. Lissa screamed. Hagar turned heavily in her tracks and looked at them dully from raised eyes under lowered brows. Mamba advanced toward her. In her extremity her voice seemed heavy with hatred for her big bungling daughter. “Yo’ damned fool,” she said. “See what yo’ done now, eberybody at dat dance know Lissa been wid Prince. People seen me come out here. Ah ought to ha’ known if Ah turned my back on yo’, yo’d play hell----” Hagar buried her face in the crook of an arm and commenced to sob. “Oh, Gawd, Ma, Ah ain’t stop to t’ink. Ah only know he been hurt Lissa.” Mamba wasted no sentimental pity on the broken thing upon the floor. Her whole being was focussed on the staggering predicament that confronted her.