nstant Fletcher delivered a smashing blow with the whole of
his strength, and struck his opponent down.

He fell with a thud, striking his head against the marble of the
fountain, and to Beryl's horror he did not rise again. He simply lay as
he had fallen, with arms flung wide and face upturned, motionless,
inanimate as a thing of stone.

In an agony she dropped upon her knees beside him.

"You brute!" she cried to Fletcher. "Oh, you brute!"

She heard him laugh in answer, a fierce and cruel laugh, but she paid no
further heed to him. She was trying to raise the fallen man, dabbing the
blood that ran from a cut on his temple, lifting his head to lie in the
hollow of her arm. Her incredulity had wholly passed. She knew him now
beyond all question. He would never manage to deceive her again.

"Speak to me! Oh, do speak to me!" she entreated. "Ronald, open your
eyes! Please open your eyes!"

"He is only stunned." It was Fletcher's voice above her. "Leave him
alone. He will soon come to his senses. Serves him right for acting the
clown in this get-up."

She looked up sharply at that and a perfect tempest of indignation took
possession of her, banishing all fear.

"What he did," she said, in a voice that shook uncontrollably, "was for
my sake alone, that he might be able to protect me from cads and
blackguards. I refuse to leave him like this, but the sooner you go, the
better. I will never--never as long as I live--speak to you again!"

Her blazing eyes, and the positive fury of her voice, must have carried
conviction to the most obtuse, and this Fletcher certainly was not. He
stood a moment, looking down at her with an insolence that might have
frightened her a little earlier, but which now she met with a new
strength that he felt himself powerless to dominate. She was not
thinking of herself at all just then, and perhaps that was the secret of
her ascendancy. His own brute force crumbled to nothing before it, and
he knew that he was beaten.

Without a word he bowed to her, smiling ironically, and turned upon his
heel.

She drew a great breath of relief as she saw him go. She felt as though
a horrible oppression had passed out of the atmosphere. That fairy haunt
with its bubbling fountain and sapphire lamps was no longer an evil
place.

She bent again over her senseless companion.

"Ronald!" she whispered. "My dear, my dear, can't you hear me? Oh, if
only you would open your eyes!"

She soaked her handker