in which Chan Lloyd had vanished and saw no help from there.  Jerry’s great strength had never seemed so terrible as now.  He caught her by the shoulders and held her, shook her, I think, a little, as one would shake a child, while she still struggled in his grasp.  In a moment his grasp loosened a little, then tightened again, for the contact of his fingers with her warm skin was awaking the demon in him, the dormant devil she had put there.

“Oh, you’re hurting me so, Jerry—­so terribly.”

But he did not even hear her voice.  His eyes were speaking to hers, holding them with a deathly fascination.  If fear was her passion she was drinking it now to the full—­fear and the sense of the ruthless power and dominion in this madman of her own creation.  Her hands clasped his shoulders.

“Jerry!” she screamed.  “Don’t look at me like that.  Your eyes burn me.”

“Into your soul—­I will burn it—­blot it out.”

“Jerry, forgive me,” she sobbed.  “I love you.”

“You lie.”

“I love you.  Forgive me!”

“No.  You lie!”

Her arms went around his neck.  And he crushed her to him, all the length of them in contact.  She struggled faintly but her lips sought his in a despairing hope of pity.  She found the lips, but no pity.  The breath was almost gone from her body.  She struggled, fighting hard, breathing his name in little panting sobs.  She too was mad now, as much of an animal as Jerry, her blood coursing furiously.  Her terror of herself must have been greater even than her terror of him, for she was quivering—­shaken by the terrible gusts of his passion.

Suddenly she felt herself released, thrust from him.  His fingers bruised the tender flesh of her shoulders but his eyes bruised her more.

“Jerry!”

His hands had caught the two sides of the flimsy shirt-waist at the breast and torn it aside, off her shoulders, off her arms.

“Have pity, Jerry,” she whimpered.

[Illustration:  “‘Have pity, Jerry,’ she whimpered.”]

“Pity, yes,” he laughed wildly.  “Kiss me.  You want to be kissed.  I’ll kill you with kissing.  Death like this—­such a death—!”

She struggled more furiously, struck, kissed and struck again.  But
Jerry’s madness triumphed—­her own.

* * * * *

At this point Jerry hid his face in his hands, trembling violently.

“I was out of my head, Roger.  Tell me that I was, for the love of God.  I must have been.  It was horrible.  I did not know.  I can scarcely remember now.  Death would have been better—­for her, for me—­than that.  My God!  If only you had told me, something.  I could have gone away, I think—­before—­But to have knowledge come like that, engulfing, flooding, drowning with its terrible bitterness.  And Marcia—­” He raised his head piteously, “I asked her to marry me, Roger—­at once.  But she only looked at me with strange eyes.