r back--by the sewing machine! . . . Will you not--will you not,
for me?"

He spoke very coldly:

"While he watches me from the stone--you come forward slowly and shut
the door!"

"That would anger him into flying at you--"

Quite as slowly, his next words:

"I do not think he is angry with me--"

Yet Skag was not in utter truth right there, even in his own knowledge.
His voice did not carry conviction of truth. . . . The thing
unsteadied his concentration. The fact that he had started to run and
thus ruffled the cobra, was still upon him like shame. It reacted to
divide his forces now, at least to make tardier his self-command. Back
of everything--Carlin's danger. There was a quick turn of his eye for
a weapon, even as he heard a deep tone from Carlin--something immortal
in the resonance:

". . . You might save me . . . but, don't you see--I want you more!"

A _lakri_ of Bhanah's leaned against the playhouse at the side towards
the road.

The cobra had lifted himself erect upon his tail almost to the level of
Skag's eyes, hood spread. Carlin talked to him--low tones--no words
which she or Skag should know again. . . .

The _lakri_ was of iron-wood from the North, thick as the man's wrist
at the top. It pulled Skag's eye a second time. It meant the
surrender of his faith in his own free-handed powers to reach for the
_lakri_; it meant the fight to death. It meant he must disappear from
the cobra's eye an instant behind the playhouse. . . . Carlin's tones
were in the air. He could not live or breathe until the threshold was
clear--no concentration but that. . . . Like the last outburst before
a breaking heart, he heard:

"If you would only go--go, my dear!"

He had chosen--or the weakness for him. There was an instant--as his
hand closed upon the _lakri_, the corner of the playhouse wall shutting
him off from the cobra--an instant that was doom-long, age-long, long
enough for him to picture _in his own thoughts_ the king turning upon
the threshold--entering, rising before Carlin! . . . The threshold was
empty as he stepped back, but the cobra had not entered. Perturbed
that the man had vanished, he had slid down into the path to look.

Skag breathed. "And now if you will shut the door, Carlin--"

A great cry from Carlin answered.

Thick and viperine, the thing looked, as it hurled forward. It was
like the fling of a lash. Four feet away, Skag looked into the hooded
head poised to st