to go on in sporting phrase, it was understood by all to be a ‘fight to a finish,’ and the mixed group did not slacken a moment or relax their efforts.  On Lilla the strain began to tell disastrously.  She grew pale—­a patchy pallor, which meant that her nerves were out of order.  She trembled like an aspen, and though she struggled bravely, I noticed that her legs would hardly support her.  A dozen times she seemed about to collapse in a faint, but each time, on catching sight of Mimi’s eyes, she made a fresh struggle and pulled through.

“By now Mr. Caswall’s face had lost its appearance of passivity.  His eyes glowed with a fiery light.  He was still the old Roman in inflexibility of purpose; but grafted on to the Roman was a new Berserker fury.  His companions in the baleful work seemed to have taken on something of his feeling.  Lady Arabella looked like a soulless, pitiless being, not human, unless it revived old legends of transformed human beings who had lost their humanity in some transformation or in the sweep of natural savagery.  As for the negro—­well, I can only say that it was solely due to the self-restraint which you impressed on me that I did not wipe him out as he stood—­without warning, without fair play—­without a single one of the graces of life and death.  Lilla was silent in the helpless concentration of deadly fear; Mimi was all resolve and self-forgetfulness, so intent on the soul-struggle in which she was engaged that there was no possibility of any other thought.  As for myself, the bonds of will which held me inactive seemed like bands of steel which numbed all my faculties, except sight and hearing.  We seemed fixed in an impasse.  Something must happen, though the power of guessing was inactive.  As in a dream, I saw Mimi’s hand move restlessly, as if groping for something.  Mechanically it touched that of Lilla, and in that instant she was transformed.  It was as if youth and strength entered afresh into something already dead to sensibility and intention.  As if by inspiration, she grasped the other’s band with a force which blenched the knuckles.  Her face suddenly flamed, as if some divine light shone through it.  Her form expanded till it stood out majestically.  Lifting her right hand, she stepped forward towards Caswall, and with a bold sweep of her arm seemed to drive some strange force towards him.  Again and again was the gesture repeated, the man falling back from her at each movement.  Towards the door he retreated, she following.  There was a sound as of the cooing sob of doves, which seemed to multiply and intensify with each second.  The sound from the unseen source rose and rose as he retreated, till finally it swelled out in a triumphant peal, as she with a fierce sweep of her arm, seemed to hurl something at her foe, and he, moving his hands blindly before his face, appeared to be swept through the doorway and out into the open sunlight.