Blizzard vented his rage upon the locked door, splintering its panels with bleeding fists; but in the meanwhile his quarry had escaped him, and was already in the street walking swiftly toward Washington Square.  He leaned at last from a window, and saw her going.  And in his heart shame gradually took the place of fury.  Why, when she laughed at him, had he not been able to dissemble his emotions for a few seconds? to mask his dreadfulness?  For then, surely, he must have got her in his power.  He should have hung his head when she laughed, begged her to forgive him for daring to lift his thoughts to her; and begged her as a token of forgiveness to shake hands with him.  Her hand once clasped in his—­

[Illustration:  Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind her.]

Well, he had made a fool of himself.  Perhaps he had frightened her utterly beyond the reach even of his long arm.  Fear would carry her out of the city, out of the State, out of the country, perhaps.  To prevent the least of these contingencies he must act swiftly and with daring wisdom.

He passed into the studio, glanced upward at the bust of himself, stopped, and looked about for something heavy with which to destroy it.  Later he would tell her that he had done so, and let that knowledge be the beginning of her torment.

But the thing that he planned to destroy looked him in the eye, smiling.  The thing smiled in the full knowledge of good and evil, the fact that it had chosen evil, the fact that it was lost forever.  It was no contagious smile, but a smile aloof and dreadful.  So a man, impaled, may smile, when agony has passed beyond the usual human passions—­and even so the legless man smiled upward at the smiling bust of himself.  And he found that he could not destroy the bust:  for the act would have about it too ominous a flavor of self-destruction.

He caught up his crutches, his little hand-organ, and hurried from the studio.  By now Barbara must be well on her way uptown.  He entered a public telephone station and gave the number of her house.  He asked to speak with Miss Marion O’Brien, and when after an interval he heard the voice of Barbara’s maid in his ear, he said:  “She’s been frightened.  Let me know what she’s going to do as soon as you know.  Don’t use the house ’phone.  Slip out to a pay station.  I must know when she’s going and where, and if she says for how long.”  He hung up the receiver, and hurried off.

An hour later Barbara’s maid telephoned him the required news, but all of it that mattered was that Barbara was not going out of town until the next day.  There was a whole afternoon and night in which to act.

The legless man sank at once into deep and swift thought.  And ten minutes later he had abandoned all idea of kidnapping Barbara for the present.  Certain dangers of so doing seemed insurmountable.  He must possess his soul in patience, and in the meanwhile discount, if possible, the fright that he had given her.  To this end he wrote the following letter: