Dave did not press the trigger at once. He took a fierce delight in torturing the man who had wrecked his life,--even while he told himself he could not believe his boast. Now he watched the colour fade from Conward's cheek; the eyes stand out in his face; the livid blotches more livid still; the cigarette drop from his nerveless lips. "You are a brave man, Conward," he said, and there was the rasp of hate and contempt in his voice. "You are a very brave man." Mrs. Hardy, sensing something wrong, came out from her sitting-room. With a little cry she swooned away. Conward tried to speak, but words stuck in his throat. With a dry tongue he licked his drier lips. "Do you believe in hell, Conward?" Dave continued. "I've always had some doubt myself, but in thirty seconds--_you'll know_." Irene, attracted by her mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop. Then, suddenly, she became aware of one thing only. A tragedy was being enacted before her eyes, and Dave would be held responsible. In a moment every impulse within her beat forth in a wild frenzy to save him from such a consequence. "Oh, don't, Dave, don't, don't shoot him," she cried, flying down the remaining steps. Before Dave could grasp her purpose she was upon him; had clutched his revolver; had wrapped her arms about his. "Don't, don't, Dave," she pleaded. "For my sake, don't do--_that_." Her words were tragically unfortunate. For a moment Dave stood as one paralyzed; then his heart dried up within him. "So that's the way of it," he said, as he broke her grip, and the horror in his own eyes would not let him read the sudden horror in hers. "All right; take it," and he placed the revolver in her hand. "You should know what to do with it." And before she could stop him he had walked out of the house. She rushed to the gate, but already the roar of his motor was lost in the hum of the city's traffic. CHAPTER TWENTY