uld be two this time," Gentilis said grinning.
"Being for the second offence, a double----"

"Pain," quoth Basterga. "Very good. Do you hear, my girl? Go to
Gentilis, and see you let him kiss you twice! And see we see and hear
it. And have a care! Have a care! Or next time your modesty may not
escape so easily! To him at once, and----"

"No!" The cry came from Claude. He was on his feet, his face on fire.
"No!" he repeated passionately.

"No?"

"Not while I am here! Not under compulsion," the young man cried. "Shame
on you!" He turned to the others, generous wrath in his face. "Shame on
you to torture a woman so--a woman alone! And you three to one!"

Basterga's face grew dark. "You are right! We are three," he muttered,
his hand slowly seeking a weapon in the corner behind him. "You speak
truth there, we are three--to one! And----"

"You maybe twenty, I will not suffer it!" the lad cried gallantly. "You
may be a hundred----"

But on that word, in the full tide of speech he stopped. His voice died
as suddenly as it had been raised, he stammered, his whole bearing
changed. He had met her eyes: he had read in them reproach, warning,
rebuke. Too late he had remembered his promise.

The big man leaned forward. "What may we be?" he asked. "You were going,
I think, to say that we might be--that we might be----"

But Claude did not answer. He was passing through a moment of such
misery as he had never experienced. To give way to them now, to lower
his flag before them after he had challenged them! To abandon her to
them, to see her--oh, it was more than he could do, more than he could
suffer! It was----

"Pray go on," Basterga sneered, "if you have not said your say. Do not
think of us!"

Oh, bitter! But he remembered how the scalding liquor had fallen on the
tender skin. "I have said it," he muttered hoarsely. "I have said it,"
and by a movement of his hand, pathetic enough had any understood it, he
seemed to withdraw himself and his opposition.

But when, obedient to Basterga's eye, the girl moved to Gentilis' side
and bent her cheek--which flamed, not by reason of Gentilis or the
coming kisses, but of Claude's presence and his cry for her--he could
not bear it. He could not stay and see it, though to go was to abandon
her perhaps to worse treatment. He rose with a cry and snatched his cap,
and tore open the door. With rage in his heart and their laughter, their
mocking, triumphant laughter, in his ears, he sp