She shot up from her chair like an automaton--rigid and upright, her
mouth opened as for a wild shriek, but all power of sound was choked in
her throat. She ran into the inner room like one possessed, her mouth
still wide open for the frantic shriek which would not come, for that
agonizing call for help.

She fell up against the back door. Her hands tore at the lock, at the
woodwork, at the plaster around; she bruised her hands and cut her
fingers to the bone, but still that call would not come to her
throat--not even now, when she heard on the other side of the door, less
than five paces from where she lay, frantic with horror, a groan, a
smothered cry, a thud--then swiftly hurrying footsteps flying away in
the night.

Then nothing more, for she was lying now in a huddled mass, half
unconscious on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVII

"The shadow that fell from the tall sunflowers."

How Klara Goldstein spent that terrible night she never fully realized.
After half an hour or so she dragged herself up from the floor. Full
consciousness had returned to her, and with it the power to feel, to
understand and to fear.

A hideous, awful terror was upon her which seemed to freeze her through
and through; a cold sweat broke out all over her body, and she was
trembling from head to foot. She crawled as far as the narrow little bed
which was in a corner of the room, and just managed to throw herself
upon it, on her back, and there to remain inert, perished with cold,
racked with shivers, her eyes staring upwards into the darkness, her
ears strained to listen to every sound that came from the other side of
the door.

But gradually, as she lay, her senses became more alive; the power to
think coherently, to reason with her fears, asserted itself more and
more over those insane terrors which had paralysed her will and her
heart. She did begin to think--not only of herself and of her miserable
position, but of the man who lay outside--dying or dead.

Yes! That soon became the most insistent thought.

Leopold Hirsch, having done the awful deed, had fled, of course, but his
victim might not be dead, he might be only wounded and dying for want of
succour. Klara--closing her eyes--could almost picture him, groaning
and perhaps trying to drag himself up in a vain endeavour to get help.

Then she rose--wretched, broken, terrified--but nevertheless resolved to
put all selfish fears aside and to ascertain the full extent of the