ny of
dread. It was indeed her time of test.

She saw Lawrence's hand clutching at the flesh of Philip's cheek. They
were panting like two beasts. It was the primitive battle of males for
the female of their choice.

Philip's hand was torn free from Lawrence's throat. The blind man
laughed as his lungs filled with air. She heard him mutter between
clenched teeth: "By God, I'll spoil your advantage."

They were struggling again for throat holds.

Lawrence was protecting his own, but the hand he had wrenched free
closed around his arm, bending it back slowly, irresistibly toward the
point where it must break. She screamed and covered her eyes for a
second at what her lover was doing--she saw him deliberately gouge at
Philip's eyes with his thumb held hard.

She heard both men fall, and looked again in spite of herself. They were
on the floor writhing, their bodies against each other, clawing,
striking, digging, and biting like two wild gorillas.

Now Lawrence was on top, now underneath, but she could not help but see
that Philip was slowly gaining. Though badly injured in one eye, he
still fought on unhesitatingly, forcing Lawrence nearer and nearer to
death. The artist was even now ceasing to resist, his struggle had
become spasmodic. Her lover was being choked to death. She sprang to her
feet.

"Lawrence!" she screamed. "Lawrence!"

He was being killed in a battle for the possession of her. Could she
stand still and see the man she loved murdered? Her hair fell about her
shoulders in a mass. She swept it back from her face, looked frantically
around her, then rushed to the wall-cupboard on the other side of the
cabin and drew out a long meat-knife.

The touch of the steel in her hand carried her out beyond the last
barrier of civilized thought. For a moment she was the savage through
and through. With a scream like that of a wounded lioness whose cub is
in danger, she sprang toward them, the knife uplifted.

Then she stopped. Something paralyzed her--generations of inherited
inhibition, conscience, what you will. "O God!" she moaned miserably, as
the weapon fell from her hand.

It clattered on the wooden floor close beside the two men. Philip looked
up, and his white teeth gleamed in a grim smile. Claire realized what
she had done--she had placed the means of certain triumph within reach
of her lover's enemy. She stooped to regain the knife, but it was too
late. Philip released his grip on Lawrence's throa