With a bound Kurt started for it, and he was there when Nash had twisted out of his seat and over the door.

“Far enough!  Don’t move!” ordered Kurt, presenting the rifle.

Nash was ghastly white, with hunted eyes and open mouth, and his hands shook.

“Oh it’s—­Kurt Dorn!” cried a broken voice.

Kurt saw the girl fumble with the door on her side, open it, and stagger out of his sight.  Then she reappeared round the car.  Bareheaded, disheveled, white as chalk, with burning eyes and bleeding lips, she gazed at Kurt as if to make sure of her deliverance.

“Miss Anderson—­if he’s harmed you—­” broke out Kurt, hoarsely.

“Oh!...  Don’t kill him!...  He hasn’t touched me,” she replied, wildly.

“But your lips are bleeding.”

“Are they?” She put a trembling hand to them.  “He—­he struck me....  That’s nothing...  But you—­you have saved me—­from God only knows what!”

“I have!  From him?” demanded Kurt.  “What is he?”

“He’s a German!” returned Lenore, and red burned out of the white of her cheeks.  “Secret agent—­I.W.W.!...  Plotter against my father’s life!...  Oh, he knocked father off the car—­dragged him!...  He ran the car away—­with me—­forced me back—­he struck me!...  Oh, if I were a man!”

Nash responded with a passion that made his face drip with sweat and distort into savage fury of defeat and hate.

“You two-faced cat!” he hissed.  “You made love to me!  You fooled me!  You let me—­”

“Shut up!” thundered Kurt.  “You German dog!  I can’t murder you, because I’m American.  Do you get that?  But I’ll beat you within an inch of your life!”

As Kurt bent over to lay down the rifle, Nash darted a hand into the seat for weapon of some kind.  But Kurt, in a rush, knocked him over the front guard.  Nash howled.  He scrambled up with bloody mouth.  Kurt was on him again.

“Take that!” cried Kurt, low and hard, as he swung his arm.  The big fist that had grasped so many plow-handles took Nash full on that bloody mouth and laid him flat.  “Come on, German!  Get out of the trench!”

Like a dog Nash thrashed and crawled, scraping his hands in the dirt, to jump up and fling a rock that Kurt ducked by a narrow margin.  Nash followed it, swinging wildly, beating at his adversary.

Passion long contained burst in Kurt.  He tasted the salt of his own blood where he had bitten his lips.  Nash showed as in a red haze.  Kurt had to get his hands on this German, and when he did it liberated a strange and terrible joy in him.  No weapon would have sufficed.  Hardly aware of Nash’s blows, Kurt tore at him, swung and choked him, bore him down on the bank, and there beat him into a sodden, bloody-faced heap.

Only then did a cry of distress, seemingly from far off, pierce Kurt’s ears.  Miss Anderson was pulling at him with frantic hands.

“Oh, don’t kill him!  Please don’t kill him!” she was crying.  “Kurt!—­for my sake, don’t kill him!”