“I’m afraid that’s the way I see it.  When I tell him that, you can lay to it that old Bill will let loose all holds and start for you, and, if they’s ten brick walls and twenty gunmen in between, it won’t make no difference.  He’ll find you, or die trying.”

Before he finished she was clinging to his arm.

“If you tell him, you’ll be doing a murder, Ronicky Doone.  What he’ll face will be worse than twenty gunmen.”

“The gent that smiles, eh?”

“Yes, John Mark.  No, no, I didn’t mean—­”

“But you did, and I knew it, too.  It’s John Mark that’s between you and Bill.  I seen you in the street, when you were talking to poor Bill, look back over your shoulder at that devil standing in the window of this house.”

“Don’t call him that!”

“D’you know of one drop of kindness in his nature, lady?”

“Are we quite alone?”

“Not a soul around.”

“Then he is a devil, and, being a devil, no ordinary man has a chance against him—­not a chance, Ronicky Doone.  I don’t know what you did in the house, but I think you must have outfaced him in some way.  Well, for that you’ll pay, be sure!  And you’ll pay with your life, Ronicky.  Every minute, now, you’re in danger of your life.  You’ll keep on being in danger, until he feels that he has squared his account with you.  Don’t you see that if I let Bill Gregg come near me—­”

“Then Bill will be in danger of this same wolf of a man, eh?  And, in spite of the fact that you like Bill—­”

“Ah, yes, I do!”

“That you love him, in fact.”

“Why shouldn’t I tell you?” demanded the girl, breaking down suddenly. 
“I do love him, and I can never see him to tell him, because I dread
John Mark.”

“Rest easy,” said Ronicky, “you’ll see Bill, or else he’ll die trying to get to you.”

“If you’re his friend—­”

“I’d rather see him dead than living the rest of his life, plumb unhappy.”

She shook her head, arguing, and so they reached the corner of Beekman Place again and turned into it and went straight toward the house opposite that of John Mark.  Still the girl argued, but it was in a whisper, as if she feared that terrible John Mark might overhear.

* * * * *

In the home of John Mark, that calm leader was still with Ruth Tolliver.  They had gone down to the lower floor of the house, and, at his request, she sat at the piano, while Mark sat comfortably beyond the sphere of the piano light and watched her.

“You’re thinking of something else,” he told her, “and playing abominably.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You ought to be,” he said.  “It’s bad enough to play poorly for someone who doesn’t know, but it’s torture to play like that for me.”

He spoke without violence, as always, but she knew that he was intensely angry, and that familiar chill passed through her body.  It never failed to come when she felt that she had aroused his anger.