She expected nothing from him, neither mercy nor quarter. And yet, she told herself, she was in no way afraid of him. As she had felt before, time and time again, in moments of great danger, a vague sense of duality of being took possession of her, as if mind stood detached from body, to flutter and dodge through the darkness before her, freed from its sheath of flesh. She felt that she might kill him now, if the chance came, quite easily and calmly. Yet she still diffidently half-hoped that the chance would be denied her. It was not that she would be cowardly about it, but it seemed to her the darker and more dubious way out of it all. No; it was _he_ who must do the killing, she told herself, with a sudden pang of half-delirious abnegation. That was the utter and ultimate solution of the tangled problem; it would be over and done with in a minute. She had lived by the sword and she could die by the sword; from that moment, too, would be counted the days of MacNutt’s own doom, the release and the deliverance of Durkin! She seemed to hug this new self-illumination to her, and a smile of scorn trembled on her lips as he stood over her, in his white and shaking wrath. “Oh, I know you, you she-devil!” he suddenly cried out, with an animal-like snarl from the depths of his flabby throat. “I know what you’re after! You think you’ll do the cheap-heroine act; you think you’ll end it by comin’ between him and me this way! You think you’ll save his puny piker’s heart a last pang or two, don’t you! You think you’ll cheat me out of that, do you? You think that it’s just between you and me now, eh, and that you can do your martyr’s act here while he’s off somewhere else moonin’ about your eyebrows and takin’ it easy!” And he laughed horribly, quietly. “No!” he cried, with a volley of the foulest oaths; “no! If I’m goin’ to get the name I’m goin’ to have the game! I mean to get my money’s worth out o’ this! I’m goin’ to kill you, you cat, but I’m goin’ to do it in my own way!” The room, which rang with his hoarse voice, seemed to grow small and dark and cell-like. The great, gorilla-like figure, in the gray light, seemed to draw back and go a long way off, and then tower over her once more. “You’re going to kill me?” she gasped, as though the thought of it had come home to her for the first time. Her more ecstatic moment of recklessness had passed strangely away, and had left her helpless and craven. Nothing but terror was written on her face as she cowered back from him and sidled along the wall, with her fingers groping crazily over its blind surface, as though some unlooked-for door of release might open to their touch. “You cat! You damned cat!” he cried hoarsely, as he leaped toward her and tried to catch her by the throat. She writhed away from him and twisted and dodged and fought until she had gained the door between the front and the back room. Through this, cat-like, she shot sidewise, and swung to the door with all her strength.