I heard Zyp give a little scornful laugh and she breathed the word “coward” at me. I stopped as if I had struck against a wall. All my blood surged back on my heart and seemed to leave my veins filled with a tingling ichor in its place. “Perhaps I have been,” I said, in a low voice, “but here’s an end of it.” Jason tittered. “We’re mighty stiltish this morning,” he said, with a sneer. “What a pity it’s November, so that we can’t have a plunge for the sake of coolness--except that they say the pool’s haunted now.” I looked at him with blazing eyes, then made another effort to get past him, but he repelled me violently. “You don’t know your place,” he said, and gave an insolent laugh. “Stand back till I choose to let you go.” I heard the doctor snigger and Zyp gave a second little cluck. My father was still absorbed--lost in his own dark reflections. The loaded reel of endurance was spinning to its end. “You might have given all your morning to one of your Susans yonder,” said my brother, mockingly. “Now she’s gone, I expect, with her apron to her eyes. She’ll enjoy her pease pudding none the less, I dare say, and perhaps look out for a more accommodating clown. It won’t be the first time you’ve had to take second place.” I struck him full between the eyes and he went down like a polled ox. All the pent-up agony of months was in my blow. As I stepped back in the recoil, madly straining even then to beat under the more furious devil that yelled in me for release, I was conscious of a hurried breath at my ear--a swift whisper: “Kill him! Stamp on his mouth! Don’t let him get up again!” and knew that it was Zyp who spoke. I put her back fiercely. Jason had sprung to his feet--half-blinded, half-stunned. His face was inhuman with passion and was working like a madman’s. But before he could gather himself for a rush, my father had him in his powerful arms. It all happened in a moment. “What’s all this?” roared my father. “Knock under, you whelp, or I’ll strangle you in your collar!” “Let me go!” cried my brother. “Look at him--look what he did!” He was choking and struggling to that degree that he could hardly articulate. I think foam was on his lips, and in his eyes the ravenous thirst for blood. “He struck me!” he panted--“do you hear? Let me go--let me kill him as he killed Modred!” There was a moment’s silence. Dr. Crackenthorpe, who had sat passively back in his chair during the fray, with his lips set in an acrid smile, made as if to rise, leaning forward with quick attention. Then my father shook Jason till he reeled and clutched at him. “Have a mind what you say, you mad cur!” he cried in a terrible voice. “It’s true! Let me go! He confessed it all to me--to me, I say!” I stood up among them alone, stricken, and I was not afraid. I was a better man than my accuser; a better brother, despite my sin. And his dagger, plunged in to destroy, had only released the long-accumulating agony of my poor inflamed and swollen heart.