She wrenched herself from his hold, and Epes was obliged to stand in front of her with his arms outspread. Sumatra’s face grew crimson with rage. “Get out of my way!” she commanded him. “Do you think everyone is a coward and a ninny like you? I’ll pump if I want to, and it doesn’t matter who sings about it. I don’t care what the other fools of women do.” “No, you won’t,” he told her grimly. She gave him a shove, and she was so strong that, unprepared, he staggered. She nearly succeeded in evading him, but he caught her with an arm around her vigorous waist. In an instant they were fighting. Braced, with her hand crushing into his face, she tried to break his hold; then Sumatra struck him in the eye. Infuriated, he wanted to knock her head off, but he had to restrain himself to a negative attack. “I’ll throw you down and sit on you,” he gasped; “here, on the street.” By way of reply she kicked his shins until, through the hurt, he could feel the blood sliding into his shoes. Shouts, which now, in his rage, he heard but dimly, derisive and encouraging calls, surrounded him. The girl, the little Amazon, was implored to crack his coco; there were protesting cries of shame, but these were lost in the larger approval and entertainment. By Jupiter, but she was finishing him! This, Epes desperately told himself, was horrible beyond words. “Stop it!” he said savagely, again and again. But through set teeth Sumatra replied that she’d pump if she chose, and no--no l-l-land shark could stop her. At this there was a hurrah. Her strength was amazing, and entirely wrong; she was like a maniac. Then with a free arm he punched her directly and rudely in the stomach. Sumatra settled against him limply; and holding her up, dragging her with him past threatening faces wavering in the dark, he succeeded in getting her around a corner to a deserted street. She was still limp, struggling for breath; her face was pale and her hair in torn disorder. Sumatra slowly recovered, and--amazingly--she smiled. Epes’ anger, too, fled; he gazed at her, examining in dismay her clothes with a feeling which might almost have been called admiration. Yet he spoke severely. “You ought to be in a cage,” he told her; “you’re just wild.” However was she to fix her clothes, she replied; where could she go? “I ought to go back to Hamilton Hall.” To this he agreed, the Balavan house was far, inconveniently situated; and they decided, since the Calefs and Balavans were now practically one family, to stop at his dwelling for the repairing of her clothes and spirit. He secured his buckets and they hurried back, through a serene air like liquid ice, over Summer Street to Chestnut. The light was still burning in Ira Calef’s office, and noiselessly they turned into an opposite room.