The struggle that followed was furious if brief.  Tudor’s temper, once thoroughly roused, was as fierce as any man’s, and though his knowledge of the science of fighting was wholly elementary, he made a desperate resistance.  It lasted for possibly thirty seconds, and then he found himself flung violently backwards across the table and pinned there, with Piers’ hands gripping his throat, and Piers’ eyes, grim and murderous, glaring down into his own.

“Be still!” ordered Piers, his voice no more than a whisper.  “Or I’ll kill you—­by Heaven, I will!”

Tudor was utterly powerless in that relentless grip.  His heart was pumping with great hammer-strokes; his breathing came laboured between those merciless hands.  His own hands were closed upon the iron wrists, but their hold was weakening moment by moment, he knew their grasp to be wholly ineffectual.  He obeyed the order because he lacked the strength to do otherwise.

Piers slowly slackened his grip.  “Now,” he said, speaking between lips that scarcely seemed to move, “you will make me that promise.”

“What—­promise?” Gaspingly Tudor uttered the question, yet something of the habitual sneer which he always kept for Piers distorted his mouth as he spoke.  He was not an easy man to beat, despite his physical limitations.

Sternly and implacably Piers answered him.  “You will swear—­by all you hold sacred—­to take no advantage whatever of me while I am away.  You had a special purpose in view when you planned to get me out of the way.  You will swear to give up that purpose, till I come back.”

“I?” said Tudor.

Just the one word flung upwards at his conqueror, but carrying with it a defiance so complete that even Piers was for the moment taken by surprise!  Then, the devil urging him, he tightened his grip again.  “Either that,” he said, “or—­”

He left the sentence unfinished.  His hands completed the threat.  He had passed the bounds of civilization, and his savagery whirled him like a fiery torrent through the gaping jaws of hell.  The maddening flames were all around him, the shrieking of demons was in his ears, driving him on to destruction.  He went, blinded by passion, goaded by the intolerable stabs of jealousy.  In those moments he was conscious of nothing save a wild delirium of anger against the man who, beaten, yet resisted him, yet threw him his disdainful refusal to surrender even in the face of overwhelming defeat.

But the brief respite had given Tudor a transient renewal of strength.  Ere that terrible grip could wholly lock again, he made another frantic effort to free himself.  Spasmodic as it was, and wholly unconsidered, yet it had the advantage of being unexpected.  Piers shifted his hold, and in that instant Tudor found and gripped the edge of the table.  Sharply, with desperate strength, he dragged himself sideways, and before his adversary could prevent it he was over the edge.  He fell heavily, dragging Piers with him, struck his head with violence against the table-leg, and crumpled with the blow like an empty sack.