on
of his room, where his revolver hung on a rack. She felt the form
beside her straighten out like a loosed spring; and the next instant
she was borne swiftly forward into the light, into the house, into the
scene she had pictured, the scene she herself had prepared. The arm
that supported her was quickly withdrawn, and she was left standing at
one side of the door, while Haig leaped away from her, and stood
waiting at the other.

Even as this was done, Huntington reappeared at the door of his
bedroom. The revolver in his right hand moved slowly upward. In
the kitchen doorway was Claire--a stricken thing in blue and
gold--clinging to the doorpost, her lips parted, her eyes wide with
terror. But Haig! Could anything have been more horrible than that
smile? It was fearless, mocking, insolent. And his whole attitude
matched it perfectly. He stood carelessly erect, with arms folded,
disdaining Huntington's weapon. But not the slightest motion of his
enemy--perhaps not even the thought before it--could have escaped
him. Marion knew him; and she felt as certain as if it had already
happened that if Seth lifted his revolver by so much as another
inch he would be stretched out on the floor there as he had been on
the ground at Paradise.

All this she saw in an interval as brief as that between two clicks of
the shutter of her kodak. Then the clock on the mantel began to
strike. It was a friendly clock, with a musical, soft note. But now
its stroke crashed upon the silence like a tolling bell. It seemed to
have its part in that halted scene, as if all waited on its last
solemn count. If she could only move, think, speak, before it
finished!

The next thing she knew she was in the middle of the room, directly
between the two men, and speaking.

"Wait, Seth!" she heard herself saying. "I did it. I brought him here
to--to make peace with you."

She ended on the clock's last note; and silence fell again.
Huntington's jaw dropped; amazement was printed on his face, and
incredulity. Marion walked quietly up to him, took the revolver from
his hand, and left him standing in the doorway, his arms hanging loose
at his side. She crossed the room to Haig, slowly, somewhat gropingly
like a somnambulist, with a half-smiling, strange expression fixed on
her chalk-white face. She stretched out her left hand to him, her
right still clasping Seth's six-shooter. There was something
magnetic, curiously compelling in her manner; for she sai