ard!"

With the word Tomlin made a savage attack without waiting for Pearse to
fall into guard. And Dolores came from her concealment, advanced
half-way down the chamber, and watched with a new intensity that was
not apparent while Venner was in the fight.

Pearse avoided his opponent's thrust at the expense of a pierced left
hand, which caught the other's point a hand-breadth from his breast.
Then the duel dropped to equality. Swift and silent they fought, silent
save for the rasp and screech of steel on steel, their feet padding
noiselessly on the deep-piled carpet. Venner drew aside and watched, his
eyes losing their hard glare, and some of his old expression returned to
his face. It was as if his resurging emotions were bringing back to him
the shame and remorse of a gentleman inveigled into performing a
despicable action. He, too, saw Dolores approaching; saw the tensity of
her expression; sensed some of the tremendous hopes that actuated her,
now that she saw the rapid culmination of all her plots and seductions.

She stood quite near to him now, leaning forward in an attitude of utter
anxiety. She saw nothing of Venner; her great, violet eyes were dusky
and full of yearning, her hands clutched at her breast. And all the
intensity of her gaze was fixed upon Tomlin. She responded to his
momentary success when he drove Pearse back with a savage assault, with
a panting little cry of joy; she fell back with widened eyes when a
counter-attack forced Tomlin almost upon her. And her lips opened in a
gasp when a vicious clash of steel told of a pressed onslaught, and
Pearse lunged heavily forward.

In the instant when Pearse followed his first plunge, Dolores stood in
uncertainty through which dawned jubilation. Then her face went white,
she seemed to lose all her splendid vitality; for her astounded eyes
fastened upon Pearse's rapier-point, protruding a foot from Tomlin's
back, and slowly the stricken man sagged away and fell at her feet,
clutching at the steel at his breast and snarling like a beast.

A hush fell over the great chamber. Then from a distance came the sound
of voices, voices of men down at the shore, ringing clear and sharp on
the still air, accentuating the deathly hush that clung around the
actors in the scene like a heavy mantle. It startled Dolores into
renewed life. She ran with feverish eagerness toward Tomlin, hurling
aside the others, and crouching upon the body in dry-eyed rage.

Venner sou