n--it was the encounter itself that he loathed, even more
than the defeat. "Oh, no, you won't," he repeated, taking one step
upward, and turning to defend his premises. "I don't mean that you
shall come into this house, or ever see the girl again, if I can
prevent it."

"Oh, you don't, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Then take that."

The words were so quickly spoken, and the blow in his face so
unexpected, that Rash staggered backwards. Being on a step he had
little or no footing, and having been drinking his balance was the
more quickly lost.

"And that!"

A second blow in the face sent him down like a stone, without a
struggle or a cry.

He fell limply on his back, his feet slipping to the sidewalk, his
body sagging on the steps like a bit of string, accidentally dropped
there. The hat, which fell off, remained on the step beside the head
it had been covering.

The man leaped backward, as if surprised at his own deed. He looked
this way and that, to see if he had been observed. A lighted car
crashed up Madison Avenue, but otherwise the street remained empty.
Creeping nearer the steps he bent over his victim, whose left hand lay
helpless and outstretched. Timidly, gingerly, he put his fingers to
the pulse, starting back from it with a shock. He spoke but two words,
but he spoke them half aloud.

"Dead! God!"

Then he walked swiftly away into Madison Avenue, where he soon found a
car going southward.

Chapter XXIV

Barbara was late for breakfast. Miss Walbrook, the aunt, was scanning
the morning paper, her refined, austere Americanism being as
noticeable in the dining-room as elsewhere in the house. Everything
was slender and strong; everything was American, unless it was the
Persian rug. On the paneled walls there were but three portraits, a
Boston ancestress, in lace cap and satins, painted by Copley; a
Philadelphia ancestor in the Continental uniform, painted by Gilbert
Stuart; and her New York grandmother, painted by Thomas Sully, looking
over her shoulder with the wild backward glance that artist gives to
the girl Victoria in the Metropolitan Museum. In a flat cabinet along
a wall was the largest collection of old American glass to be found in
the country.

Barbara rushed in, with apologies for being late. "I didn't sleep a
wink. It doesn't seem to me as if I should ever sleep again. Where's
my cup?"

"Wildgoose will bring it. As the coffee had grown cold he took that
and the cup to ke