“Very subtle of him!” said Guy.  He considered the point for a moment or two, then swept it aside.  “Well, I’ll settle up with him.  It’ll be all right.  I always pay my debts—­sooner or later.  So that’s all right, isn’t it?  Say it’s all right!”

He spoke imperiously, meeting her scorn with a dominating self-assurance.  There followed a few moments that were tense with a mental conflict such as Sylvia had never deemed possible between them.  Then in a very low voice she made answer.

“No.  It is not all right.  Nothing can ever make it so again.  Please say good-bye—­and go!”

He made a furious movement, and caught her suddenly and violently by the wrists.  His eyes shone like the eyes of a starving animal.  Before she had time to resist him, her hands were gripped behind her and she was fast locked in his arms.

He spoke, his face close to hers, his hot breath seeming to consume her, his words a mere whisper through lips that almost moved upon her own.

“Do you think I’m going—­now?  Do you think you can send me away with a word like that—­fling me off like an old glove—­you who have belonged to me all these years?  No, don’t speak!  You’d better not speak!  If you dare to deny your love for me now, I believe I shall kill you!  If you had been any other woman, I wouldn’t have stopped to argue.  But—­you are you.  And—­I—­love you so.”

His voice broke unexpectedly upon the words.  For a moment—­one sickening, awful moment—­his lips were pressed upon hers, seeming to draw all the breath—­the very life itself—­out of her quivering body.  Then there came a terrible sound—­a rending sound like the tearing of dry wood—­and the dreadful constriction of his hold was gone.  She burst from it, gasping for air and freedom with the agonized relief of one who has barely escaped suffocation.  She sprang for the door though her knees were doubling under her.  She reached it, and threw it wide.  Then she looked back. . . .

He was huddled against the wall, his head in his hands, writhing as if in the grip of some fiendish torturer.  Broken sounds escaped him—­sounds he fought frantically to repress.  He seemed to be choking; and in a second her memory flashed back to that anguish she had witnessed weeks before when first she had seen Kieff’s remedy and implored him to use it.

For seconds she stood, a helpless witness, too horrified to move.  Then, her physical strength reviving, pity stirred within her, striving against what had been a sick and fearful loathing.  Gradually her vision cleared.  The evil shadow lifted from her brain.  She saw him as he was—­a man in desperate need of help.

She flung her repugnance from her, though it dung to her, dragging upon her as she moved like a tangible thing.  She closed the door and went slowly back into the room, mastering her horror, fighting it at every step.  She readied the struggling, convulsed figure, laid her hands upon it,—­and her repulsion was gone.