terrace
or in the house, Westmore, Barres and Dulcie Soane had followed the
winding main drive as far as the level, where their car was waiting
among scores of other cars.

But Thessalie was not there; the chauffeur had not seen her.

"Where in the world could she have gone?" faltered Dulcie. "She was
standing up there on the terrace with us, a moment ago; then, the very
next second, she had vanished utterly."

Westmore, grim and pallid, walked back along the drive; Dulcie
followed with Barres. As they overtook Westmore, he cast one more
glance back at the ranks of waiting cars, then stared up at the
terraced hill above them, over which the artificial moon hung above
the lindens, glowing with pallid, lambent fires.

There was a vague whitish object on one of the grassy slopes--something
in motion up there--something that was running erratically but
swiftly--as though in pursuit--or _pursued_!

"My God! What's that, Garry!" he burst out. "That thing up there on
the hillside!"

He sprang for the steps, Barres after him, taking the ascent at
incredible speed, up, up, then out along a shrub-set grassy slope.

"Thessa!" shouted Westmore. "Thessa!"

But the girl was flat on her back on the grass now, fighting sturdily
for life--twisting, striking, baffling the whining, panting thing that
knelt on her, holding her and trying to drive a knife deep into the
lithe young body which always slipped and writhed out of his trembling
clutch.

Again and again he tore himself free from her grasp; again and again
his armed hand sought to strike, but she always managed to seize and
drag it aside with the terrible strength of one dying. And at last,
with a last crazed, superhuman effort, she wrested the knife from his
unnerved fist, tore it out of his spent fingers.

It fell somewhere near her on the grass; he strove to reach it and
pick it up, but already her dauntless resistance began to exhaust him,
and he groped for the knife in vain, trying to pin her down with one
hand while, with desperate little fists, she rained blows on his
bloodless face that dazed him.

But there was still another way--a much better way, in fact. And, as
the idea came to him, he ripped the red-silk sash from his breast and,
in spite of her struggles, managed to pass it around her bare neck.

"Now!" he panted. "I keep my word at last. C'est fini, ma petite
Nihla."

"Jim! Help me!" she gasped, as Ferez pulled savagely at the silk
noose, tightened