t the panels with the whole strength of her slim body.
But it was not enough. The door gave and pushed her back. Then,
realizing that she could not hold it against superior force, she
suddenly let go and ran to stand at bay behind the table.

When Jim Logan, all the latent brutality in him wide awake, came
bounding over the threshold she faced him across his silver and
flowers and glittering glass.

"Come here!" he said in a voice curiously unlike the jovial tones she
had known as his.

"No!" she panted. "I'll stay where I am till the police arrest you as
a kidnapper."

"You'll not stay!" he flung at her. "If you won't come out of that,
I'll fetch you."

The girl stood behind one of the two chairs drawn up to the table and
both hands convulsively clutched the high, carved back. But seeing him
spring toward her, she lost her nerve for the first time. Trying to
make a screen of the chair, she felt the floating gauze of her dress
catch on some unseen nail or splinter of broken woods struggled to
tear it free, and found herself in Logan's arms. The shrill sound of
ripping stitches and tearing gauze mingled with the sharp blow of the
girl's palm on the man's ear, and his oath breathed hot on her cheek.

"You fool, do you think I wish to keep you after what you've done?" he
blurted out. "All I ask is to be rid of you before those fellows get
here. I thought I'd have one kiss--but I wouldn't take it now if you
gave it to me. Sims, run down into the basement and let her out that
way. Now, you young devil, after him, if you don't want to be choked
and buried in the cellar."

Hardly knowing what she did, Win obeyed. Tripping in the rags of her
torn gown, she followed the man, who opened a door that led to a
narrow stairway. Next came a vague vision of a basement corridor and a
disordered kitchen. A minute later she was pushed into a dark area, a
door was shut behind her, she was stumbling up some stone steps; then,
hurrying along the street as fast as she could go, conscious only that
danger was behind her, that she must fly from it and put a long
distance between her and that closed house.

If Win had known that the door had shut upon Jim Logan also, and that
he had walked out of the house almost on her heels, she would have
hurried even faster. But she did not know. And luckily he took the
opposite direction, making straight for the New Cosmopolitan Club at
the corner, which she had noticed when passing in the taxi.