and
red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to the dabs
of finger-nails.

He seemed to read her mind, and in answer he took up a heavy pewter cup
and held it toward her. For an instant he permitted her to scrutinize the
cup, and then his fingers closed. He opened his hand and the shapeless
mass of pewter fell to the floor. He threw his head back with the ecstasy
of perfect physical fitness. His laughter arose, almost hysterically.

"Fectnor!" she cried, standing tense and white before him, "I think you're
all brute--just common, hopeless brute."

He became perfectly serious; but presently he regarded her with a flicker
of humor in his eyes, she thought. "You didn't say that as if you meant
it, Sylvia," he declared. "You didn't say it as if you quite believed it.
But I'm going to show you that you're right. What we've been together,
Sylvia, you and I, we're going to continue to be until we both agree to
quit. That's what you may call justice. And so far I'm not agreeing to
quit."

He came toward her then, and she perceived that his bearing had altered
completely. He seemed moved by some impulse stronger than himself--as if
it were quite outside himself.

She felt that her heart had suddenly ceased to beat. A leopard crouching
before her on a limb could not have seemed more pitiless, more terrible.
She had sprung to the door opening into her father's room before he could
reach her. Her fingers shot the bolt and the door was open. And then she
knew she had made a fatal mistake in holding that long and quiet parley
with the beast that had trapped her. She had led her father, doubtless, to
believe that it was an amicable talk that had been going on behind the
closed door. She knew now that at the first instant of Fectnor's
appearance she should have given battle and cried for help.

Now, looking into the adjoining room, while Fectnor's grip closed upon her
wrist, she saw the front door quietly close. Her father had gone out.

CHAPTER XIV

Sylvia climbed the hill in the dusk.

A casual observer would have remarked that all was not right with her.
Beneath a calm exterior something brooded. You might have supposed that
some of the trivial things of existence had gone wrong: that a favorite
servant had left her, or that the dressmaker had failed to keep an
appointment. Sylvia was not an unschooled creature who would let down the
scroll of her life's story to be read by every idle eye.