will go where she pleases.
And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not powerless,
and"--here I let her have a full look into my red-hot furnaces of wrath--"I
stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose me--at nothing!"

Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and trembling
as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering, outstretched
tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me guide her to the
door. Her mother recovered speech. "Anita!" she cried. "What are you doing?
Are you mad?"

"I think I must be out of my mind," said Anita. "But, if you try to keep me
here, I shall tell him all--_all_."

Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged
her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it
round her. Before she--or I--realized it, she was in my waiting electric.

"Up town," I said to my man.

She tried to get out.

"Oh, what have I done! What am I doing!" she cried, her courage oozing
away. "Let me out--please!"

"You are going with me," said I, entering and closing the door. I saw the
door of the Ellersly mansion opening, saw old Ellersly, bareheaded and
distracted, scuttling down the steps.

"Go ahead--fast!" I called to my man.

And the electric was rushing up the avenue, with the bell ringing for
crossings incessantly. She huddled away from me into the corner of the
seat, sobbing hysterically. I knew that to touch her would be fatal--or
to speak. So I waited.

XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY

As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through the
tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I had a
glimpse of her progress toward composure--now she was drying her eyes with
the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms were up, and
with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she was straight and
still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap was edged drawn close
about her throat. I shifted to the opposite seat, for my nerves warned me
that I could not long control myself, if I stayed on where her garments
were touching me.

I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of
realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there she
was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I can not think of even now
without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what the sun is to a
blind man dreamin