front of him as if he would like to tear her
with his hands. A red swimming had fallen over his eyes--all he knew was
that the woman-person in front of him had fooled him more bitterly and
commonly than anyone had been fooled since Adam--and that if he could
not get loose in some way or other from the hateful strength that was
holding him, he would burst into the disgusting tears of a vicious small
boy who is being firmly held down and spanked by an older girl. Grammar,
manners and sense had gone from him as completely as if he had never
possessed them.

"Lemme go! oh damn you, damn you--you _woman_--you _devil--lemme_ go!"

"Be _quiet,_ Sargent! Oh shut up, you _fool, shut up!"_

A noise came from the kitchen--a noise like the sound of a man falling
over boxes. Mr. Piper struggled furiously--Paris was crawling out of the
window--Paris, the sleek, sly chamberer, the gay hateful cuckoo of his
private nest was getting away! Mrs. Severance turned her head toward the
noise a second. Mr. Piper fought like a crippled wrestler.

"Grr-ah! Ah, would you, would you?"

He had wrenched one hand free for an instant--it went to his pocket and
came out of it with something that shone and was hard like a new metal
toy.

_"Now_ will you lemme go?" But Mrs. Severance tried to grab for the
hand with the revolver in it instead, and succeeded only in striking
the barrel a little aside. There was a noise that sounded like a
cannon-cracker bursting in Mr. Piper's face--it was so near--and then he
was standing up, shaking all over, but free and a man ready to explain a
number of very painful things to Paris as soon as he caught him. He took
one step toward the dining-room, sheer rage tugging at his body as high
wind tugs at a bough. Now that woman was out of the way----

And then he saw that she was out of the way indeed. She could not have
fallen without his hearing her fall--how could she?--but she was lying
on the floor in a crumple of clothes and one of her arms was thrown
queerly out from her side as if it did not belong to her body any
longer. He stood looking at her for what seemed one long endless wave of
uncounted time and that firecracker noise he had heard kept echoing and
echoing through his head like the sound of loud steps along a long and
empty corridor. Then he suddenly dropped the pistol and knelt clumsily
beside her.

"Rose! Rose!" he started calling huskily, his hands feeling with frantic
awkwardness for her pulse a