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As she sprang to the ground again, Pierre spoke. The frown had gone from his face; it wore a faint, ironical smile. His eyes, alert, unblinking, marked her every movement as the eyes of a lynx upon its prey. He did not appear in the least disconcerted. There was even a sort of terrible patience in his attitude, as though he already saw the end of the struggle.

“Would it not be wiser, mademoiselle,” he said, “to reserve your steel for an enemy?”

She met his piercing look for an instant as she compelled her white lips to answer. “You are the worst enemy that I have.”

He threw back his head with an arrogant gesture very characteristic of him. “By your own choice, mademoiselle,” he said.

“Yes,” she flung back passionately. “I prefer you as an enemy.”

He laughed at that–a fiendish, scoffing laugh that made her shrink in every nerve. Then, with unmoved composure, he walked to the mantelpiece and took up one of the foils that lay there.

“Now,” he said quietly, “since you are determined to fight me, so be it! But when you are beaten, Mademoiselle Stephanie, do not ask for mercy!”

But she drew back sharply from his advance. “Take one of those rapiers,” she said.

He shook his head, still with that mocking smile upon his lips. “This will serve my purpose better,” he said. “Are you ready, mademoiselle? On guard!”

And with that his weapon crossed hers. She knew his purpose the moment she encountered it. It was written in every grim line of his countenance. He meant the conflict to be very short.

She was no novice in the art of fencing, but she was no match for him. Moreover, she could not meet the pitiless eyes that stared straight into hers. They distracted her. They terrified her. Yet every moment seemed to her to be something gained. Through all the wild chaos of her overstrung nerves she was listening, listening desperately, for the sound of feet outside the door. If she could only withstand him for a few short seconds! If only her strength would last!

But she was nearing exhaustion, and she knew it. Her brain had begun to swim. She saw him in a blur before her quivering vision. The hand that grasped the rapier was too numbed to obey her behests. Suddenly there came a tumult in the corridor without–a hoarse yelling and the rush of many feet. It was the sound she had been listening for, but it startled, it unnerved her. And in that instant Pierre thrust through her guard and with a lightning twist of the wrist sent her weapon hurtling through the air.

The sound of its fall was lost in the clamour outside the door–a clamour so sudden and so horrible that it did for Stephanie that which nothing else on earth could have accomplished. It drove her to the man she hated for protection.

As he flung down the foil, she made a swift move towards him. There was no longer shrinking in her eyes. She was simply a trembling, panic-stricken woman, turning instinctively to the stronger power for help. A little earlier she could have died without a tremor, but the wild strife of the past few minutes had broken down her fortitude. Her strength was gone.

“Monsieur!” she panted. “Monsieur!”

He caught her roughly to him. Even in that moment of deadly peril there was a certain fiery exultation about him. He held her fast, his eyes gazing straight down into hers.

“Shall I save you?” he said. “I can die with you–if you prefer it.”

“Save me!” she cried piteously. “Save me!”

He bent his head, and suddenly, fiercely, savagely, he kissed her white lips. Then, before she could utter cry or protest, he whirled her across the room to the open window, catching up her cloak as he went; and, almost before the horror of his kiss had dawned upon her, she was out upon the balcony, alone with him in the awful dark.