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286 handling she must have suffered, if she had resisted at all, before those beasts could have bound her, excited an indignation from whose light, as it blazed in Lanyard's eyes, even Ekstrom winced.

The hand was tremulous with which he sought to loose her wrists, so much so that she could not but notice.

"Don't mind me—look to that man!" she begged. "Leave me to unfasten these with my teeth. He can't be trusted for a single instant."

"Mademoiselle," Lanyard mumbled, instinctively employing the French idiom—"you have reason."

For an instant only he hesitated, swayed this way and that by the maddest of impulses, then resigned himself absolutely to their ascendancy.

"This goes beyond all bounds," he said in an undertone.

Deliberately leaving the Englishwoman to free herself according to her suggestion—forgetful, indeed, for the moment, that she was not altogether free—he moved to the desk and left his own automatic there beside Ekstrom's.

"Mademoiselle," he said mechanically, without looking at the girl, without power to perceive aught else in the world but the white, evil face of his enemy, "for what I am about to do, I beg you forgive me, of your charity. I can endure no more. It is too much. …"

He strode past her.

She twisted in her chair, then rose, following him with wide eyes of alarm above her hands, whose bonds her teeth worried without rest.

Ekstrom had not stirred, though one flash of pure