together, you shall always
call me husband. Do you hear?"

"Yes," she said bracing herself for the contest, in whatever shape it
was coming.

The knife was lying in her lap. She let it slip into the fold of her
dress, and laid her forearms with clasped fingers over her knees, which
she pressed desperately together. The dreaded thing was out of sight at
last. She felt a dampness break out all over her.

"I am not going to hide you, like that good-for-nothing, finicky, sneery
gentleman. You shall be my pride and my chum. Isn't that better than
rotting on an island for the pleasure of a gentleman, till he gives you
the chuck?"

"I'll be anything you like," she said.

In his intoxication he crept closer with every word she uttered, with
every movement she made.

"Give your foot," he begged in a timid murmur, and in the full
consciousness of his power.

Anything! Anything to keep murder quiet and disarmed till strength had
returned to her limbs and she could make up her mind what to do. Her
fortitude had been shaken by the very facility of success that had come
to her. She advanced her foot forward a little from under the hem of her
skirt; and he threw himself on it greedily. She was not even aware of
him. She had thought of the forest, to which she had been told to run.
Yes, the forest--that was the place for her to carry off the terrible
spoil, the sting of vanquished death. Ricardo, clasping her ankle,
pressed his lips time after time to the instep, muttering gasping words
that were like sobs, making little noises that resembled the sounds of
grief and distress. Unheard by them both, the thunder growled distantly
with angry modulations of it's tremendous voice, while the world outside
shuddered incessantly around the dead stillness of the room where the
framed profile of Heyst's father looked severely into space.

Suddenly Ricardo felt himself spurned by the foot he had been
cherishing--spurned with a push of such violence into the very hollow of
his throat that it swung him back instantly into an upright position on
his knees. He read his danger in the stony eyes of the girl; and in
the very act of leaping to his feet he heard sharply, detached on the
comminatory voice of the storm the brief report of a shot which half
stunned him, in the manner of a blow. He turned his burning head, and
saw Heyst towering in the doorway. The thought that the beggar had
started to prance darted through his mind. For a fraction