Annie knelt on him, the other girls knelt and hung on to him. Their faces were flushed, their hair wild, their eyes were all glittering strangely. He lay at last quite still, with face averted, as an animal lies when it is defeated and at the mercy of the captor. Sometimes his eye glanced back at the wild faces of the girls. His breast rose heavily, his wrists were torn.
“Now, then, my fellow!” gasped Annie at length. “Now then—now—”
At the sound of her terrifying, cold triumph, he suddenly started to struggle as an animal might, but the girls threw themselves upon him with unnatural strength and power, forcing him down.
“Yes—now, then!” gasped Annie at length.
And there was a dead silence, in which the thud of heart-beating was to be heard. It was a suspense of pure silence in every soul.
“Now you know where you are,” said Annie.
The sight of his white, bare arm maddened the girls. He lay in a kind of trance of fear and antagonism. They felt themselves filled with supernatural strength.
Suddenly Polly started to laugh—to giggle wildly—helplessly—and Emma and Muriel joined in. But Annie and Nora and Laura remained the same, tense, watchful, with gleaming eyes. He winced away from these eyes.
“Yes,” said Annie, in a curious low tone, secret and deadly. “Yes! You’ve got it now! You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You know what you’ve done.”
He made no sound nor sign, but lay with bright, averted eyes, and averted, bleeding face.