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Rh and slur her r's and to change the slang of the gutters for that of the race tracks.

But, somehow, she knew that the Thing would be more familiar with her earlier diction.

She lay down on the couch, staring into the darkness.

She had decided to watch carefully, to pounce upon the Thing suddenly and to throttle it.

For, somehow, the Thing had taken on the suggestion of deliberate, personal intention of an aggressive hostility—something which felt and hated, even suffered, yet which had no bodily reality.

The realization of it froze Diana into rigidity—not the rigidity of fear, but something far worse than fear, partaking of Fate—of—she didn't know what.

She only knew that she must watch—then pounce and kill.

"I must have matters out with it," she thought. "One of us two is master in this room; it or I. And I can't afford to wait all night. At half past eleven young 'Bunny' Whipple is calling for me—"

Again, at the thought of Bunny Whipple, she felt that strange, hateful new sensation of awe blended