She choked down a cry. Her feet were like lead now, and she stumbled on the first of the half-dozen steps that led to the veranda. Haig pulled her up quickly, flung his right arm around her waist, and fairly carried her up the steps. At that moment, just as they stood on the level floor, the door was opened, and Huntington's huge body appeared in silhouette against the lamplight. "That you, Marion?" he called out, peering into the darkness. Then, almost instantly: "Somebody with you, Marion?" Haig answered for her. "Good evening, Cousin Seth!" he called out cheerily. "I just dropped in to ask about your health." For perhaps as long as it took him to catch his arrested breath, Huntington stood motionless. Then, with an oath, he bounded back into the room, and disappeared, as Marion dully realized, in the direction of his room, where his revolver hung on a rack. She felt the form beside her straighten out like a loosed spring; and the next instant she was borne swiftly forward into the light, into the house, into the scene she had pictured, the scene she herself had prepared. The arm that supported her was quickly withdrawn, and she was left standing at one side of the door, while Haig leaped away from her, and stood waiting at the other. Even as this was done, Huntington reappeared at the door of his bedroom. The revolver in his right hand moved slowly upward. In the kitchen doorway was Claire--a stricken thing in blue and gold--clinging to the doorpost, her lips parted, her eyes wide with terror. But Haig! Could anything have been more horrible than that smile? It was fearless, mocking, insolent. And his whole attitude matched it perfectly. He stood carelessly erect, with arms folded, disdaining Huntington's weapon. But not the slightest motion of his enemy--perhaps not even the thought before it--could have escaped him. Marion knew him; and she felt as certain as if it had already happened that if Seth lifted his revolver by so much as another inch he would be stretched out on the floor there as he had been on the ground at Paradise. All this she saw in an interval as brief as that between two clicks of the shutter of her kodak. Then the clock on the mantel began to strike. It was a friendly clock, with a musical, soft note. But now its stroke crashed upon the silence like a tolling bell. It seemed to have its part in that halted scene, as if all waited on its last solemn count. If she could only move, think, speak, before it finished! The next thing she knew she was in the middle of the room, directly between the two men, and speaking. "Wait, Seth!" she heard herself saying. "I did it. I brought him here to--to make peace with you."