But his eyes winced from hers.
"She--Nelly had a bruise on her cheek, that afternoon; and it wasn't an
old bruise. Lynn: you struck her!"
"Perhaps. Maybe I did forget myself, I don't remember. What if I did?
She asked for it, didn't she? Do you think I've got the patience of Job,
to let her get away with insisting on standing between you and me? I'd
have half-killed her if she'd stuck to her refusal to go back East!"
Realizing that his tongue was again running away with his discretion, he
curbed it sharply, on the verge, perhaps, of admissions yet more
damaging, and in panic essayed to win back lost ground.
"But what of that? It's ancient history, Linda."
She started back in repulsion, but he overtook her in the middle of the
room and again crushed her to him.
"Linda, Linda! what do these things matter? I love you, dearest, you
love me, nothing else matters, nothing can possibly matter but our need
for each other. For God's sake be kind to me! forget----"
The fury of her antagonism found him unprepared. Once more his arms were
empty. And this time when he started in pursuit, something he couldn't
see struck him brutally in the chest and bodily threw him back. In the
same instant he heard a heavy, crashing noise he couldn't account for.
An inhuman sound. It shook the room, beat deafeningly upon one's ears.
As if someone had overturned a heavy piece of furniture. Only, no one
had. Certainly he hadn't, certainly Lucinda hadn't. She was flattened
against the farther wall, watching him with a face of horror, blanched
and gaping.
Enraged, he put forth all his strength to recover from that inexplicable
blow. And instantly it was repeated. And again. Each time accompanied by
that savage, crashing noise. Like thunder cut off short. And each time
he reeled under the impact, and sickening pains shot through him, like
knives white-hot. He felt himself sinking....
In expiring flashes of consciousness he saw Lucinda, still flat against
the wall, staring not at him but at a French window nearby. Between its
curtains a woman's arm was thrust, the hand grasping an automatic pistol
with muzzle faintly fuming. There was a face of shadowed pallor dimly
visible beyond the curtains, a face with wild, exultant eyes ...
Nelly's....