She raised her eyes wearily; she drew her arm about her in a forlorn gesture of concealment. Her eyes met the strange orbs of the other, and a faint thrill of horror stirred; other than this, she felt nothing. Then his eyes were approaching her; she was conscious of the illusion that they were expanding, filling all the space in front of her. Their weird glow filled the world, dominated everything. "Will you yield?" he queried. The eyes commanded. "Yes," she said dully. She felt his hands icy cold on her bare shoulders. They traveled like a shudder about her body, and suddenly she was pressed close to him. "Are you mine?" he demanded. For the first time there was a tinge of expression in the toneless voice, a trace of eagerness. She made no answer; her eyes, held by his, stared like the eyes of a person in a trance, unwinking, fascinated. "Are you mine?" he repeated, his breath hissing on her cheek. "Yes." She heard her own voice in automatic reply to his question. "Mine--for the delights of evil?" "Yours!" she murmured. The eyes had blotted out everything. "And do you hate me?" "No." The arms about her tightened into crushing bands. The pressure stopped her breath; her very bones seemed to give under their fierce compression. "Do you hate me?" he muttered. "Yes!" she gasped. "Yes! I hate you!" "Ah!" He twisted his hand in her black hair, wrenching it roughly back. "Are you ready now for the consummation? To look upon the face of evil?" She made no reply. Her eyes, as glassy as those of a sleep-walker, stared into his. "Are you ready?" "Yes," she said. He pressed his mouth to hers. The fierceness of the kiss bruised her lips, the pull of his hand in her hair was a searing pain, the pressure of his arm about her body was a suffocation. Yet--somehow--there was again the dawning of that unholy pleasure--the same degraded delight that had risen in her on that other occasion, in the room of the red-checked table cloth. Through some hellish alchemy, the leaden pain was transmuting itself into the garish gold of a horrible, abnormal pleasure. She found her crushed lips attempting a feeble, painful response. At her movement, she felt herself swung abruptly from her feet. With his lips still crushing hers, he raised her in his arms; she felt herself borne across the room. He paused; there was a sudden release, and she crashed to the hard surface of the couch, whose rough covering scratched the bare flesh of her back. Nicholas Devine bent over her; she saw his hand stretch toward her single remaining garment. And again, from somewhere in her harassed soul, a spark of resistance flashed. "Nick!" she moaned. "Oh, Nick! Help me!" "Call him!" said the other, a sneer on his face. "Call him! He hears; it adds to his torment!" She covered her eyes with her hands. She felt his hand slip coldly between her skin and the elastic about her waist. "Nick!" she moaned again. "Nick! Oh, my God! Nick!" 27 Two in Hell