Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/378

 door. Yet the woman was too quick for him. She leaped before him and barred his course.

"I am asking you to pluck my throat out with your great hands," she cried with fury. "Don't you understand, you fool? Don't you understand, I say? I cannot, I will not go back to the gutter; yet I cannot go anywhere else. Why don't you do as you are told?"

"Do go!" he cried weakly, piteously. The veins were swelling in his neck.

He strove to thrust her aside, but she resisted him; and when he tried again she fixed her strong teeth in his hand ferociously.

"Do it now!" she cried, watching his eyes with the baleful hunger of a she-wolf.

"You are not worth it," said Northcote, recovering possession of himself.

She spat in his face.

Northcote began to realize that he had to deal with a mad woman.

She plucked a knife from the table. By this time, however, the man had all his wits about him, and the movement was anticipated. He had seized her before she could make use of it.

He knew immediately that he had entered upon a terrible struggle. He possessed immense physical power, but the creature upon whom he had to exercise it was extremely supple and vigorous, and, above all, was now a maniac. She fought with the fury of a lioness. Her unbridled rage seemed to make her more than a match for him. Screaming foul oaths, and resorting to devices that a wild beast would not have employed, the issue hung in the balance. Inch by inch, however, he obtained a