"I thought that would make you speak," he remarked. "And you still despise me?" Her breathing had quickened, but her answer was instant; for the first time it held a throb of anger. "I despise you for a coward. You are even viler than I thought." He returned the weapon to his pocket. "It is not for you," he said. "I am more primitive than that. It is for the man who stands between us, for the man who thought he could whip Nap Errol--and live. I have never gone unarmed since." He paused a moment, grimly regarding her. Then, "There is only one thing I will take in exchange for that man's life," he said. "Only--one--thing!" But she stood like a statue, uttering no word. A sudden gust of passion swept over him, lashing him to headlong fury. "And that one thing I mean to have!" he told her violently. "No power in heaven or hell shall keep you from me. I tell you"--his voice rose, and in the darkness those two flames glowed more redly, such flames as had surely never burned before in the face of a man--"whatever you may say, you are mine, and in your heart you know it. Sooner or later--sooner or later--I will make you own it." His voice sank suddenly to a whisper, no longer passionate, only inexpressibly evil. "Will you despise me then, Queen Anne? I wonder!--I wonder!" She moved at last, raised her hand, stiffly pointed. "Go!" she said. "Go!" Yet for a space he still stood in the doorway, menacing her, a vital figure, lithe, erect, dominant. The tension was terrible. It seemed to be strained to snapping point, and yet it held. It was the fiercest battle she had ever known--a battle in which his will grappled with hers in a mighty, all-mastering grip, increasing every instant till she felt crushed, impotent, lost, as if all the powers of evil were let loose and seething around her, dragging her down. Her resolution began to falter at last. She became conscious of a numbing sense of physical weakness, an oppression so overwhelming that she thought her heart would never beat again. Once more she seemed to totter on the edge of a depth too immense to contemplate, to hover above the very pit of destruction... And then suddenly the ordeal was over. A blinding flash of lightning lit the room, glimmered weirdly, splitting the gloom as a sword rending a curtain, and was gone. There came a sound like the snarl of a startled animal, and the next instant a frightful crash of thunder. Anne reeled back, dazed, stunned, utterly unnerved, and sank into a chair. When she came to herself she was alone. CHAPTER XIII AN APPEAL AND ITS ANSWER A puff of rain-washed air wandered in through the wide-flung window, and Lucas Errol turned his head languidly upon the pillow to feel it on his face. He sighed as he moved, as if even that slight exertion cost him some resolution. His eyes had a heavy, drugged look. They seemed more deeply sunken than usual, but there was no sleep in them, only the utter weariness that follows the sleep of morphia.