"I'll bargain with you!" she gasped. She needed a moment's respite to clarify a thought that had been growing in her mind. "Bargain? What have you to offer?" "As much as you!" "Ah, but I have a threat--the threat to your sweetheart! And I'm offering too the lure of that evil whose face so charmed you recently. Have you forgotten how nearly I won you to the worship of that principle? Have you forgotten the ecstasy of that pain?" His terrible, blood-shot eyes were approaching her face; and strangely, the girl felt a curious recurrence of that illogical desire to yield that had swept over her on that disastrous night of Saturday. There _had_ been an ecstasy; there _had_ been a wild, ungodly, unhallowed pleasure in his blows, in the searing pain of his kisses on her lacerated lips. She realized vaguely that she was staring blankly, dazedly, into the red eyes, and that somewhere within her, some insane brain-cells were urging her to clamber to the seat beside him. She tore her eyes away. She rubbed her bruised shoulder, and the pain of her own touch restored her vanishing logical faculties. She returned her gaze to the face of the other, meeting his gaze now coolly. "Nick!" she said earnestly, as if calling him from a distance. "Nick!" There was, she fancied, the faintest gleam of concern apparent in the features opposite her. She continued. "Nick!" she repeated. "You can hear me, Honey. Come to the house as soon as you are able. Come tonight, or any time; I'll wait until you do. You'll come, Honey; you must!" She backed away from the car; the other made no move to halt her. She circled the vehicle and dashed recklessly across the street. From the safety of the opposite walk she glanced back; the red-eyed visage was regarding her steadily through the glass of the window. 21 A Question of Synapses Pat almost ran the few blocks to her home. She hastened along in a near panic, regardless of the glances of pedestrians she chanced to pass. With the disappearance of the immediate urge, the composure for which she had struggled had deserted her, and she felt shaken, terrified, and weak. Her arm ached miserably, and her wrenched shoulder pained at each movement. It was not until she attained her own door-step that she paused, panting and quivering, to consider the events of the evening. "I can't stand any more of this!" she muttered wretchedly to herself. "I'll just have to give up, I guess; I can't pit myself another time against--that thing." She leaned wearily against the railing of the porch, rubbing her injured arm. "Dr. Carl was right," she thought. "Nick was right; it's dangerous. There was a moment there at the end when he--or it--almost had me. I'm frightened," she admitted. "Lord only knows what might have happened had I been a little weaker. If the Lord _does_ know," she added.