She saw his hands clench with the words, and an overwhelming sense of danger swept over her. Instinctively she started to her feet. If a tiger had leapt in upon her through the window she could not have been more terrified.
Nick took a single stride towards her, and she stopped as if struck powerless. His face was the face she had once seen bent over a man in his death-agony, convulsed with passion, savage, merciless,—the face of a devil.
She shrank away from him in nameless terror, gasping and panic-stricken. "Nick," she whispered, "are you—mad?"
He answered her jerkily in a strangled voice that was like the snarl of a beast. "Yes—I am mad. If you try to run away from me now—I won't answer for myself."
She gazed at him with widening eyes. "But, but—" she faltered—"I—I don't understand. Oh, Nick, you frighten me!"
It was the cry of a child, lost, bewildered, piteous. Had she withstood him, had she sought to escape, the demon in him would have burst the last restraining bond, and have shattered in one moment of unshackled violence all the chivalrous patience which during the last few weeks he had spent his whole strength to achieve.
But that cry of desolation pierced straight through his madness, cutting deeper than reproach or protest, wounding him to the heart.
With a sound that was half-sob, half-groan, he turned his back upon her and covered his face.
For a space of seconds he stood so, not moving, seeming not even to breathe. And Muriel, steadying herself by the mantelpiece, watched him with a panting heart.
Then abruptly, moving with a quick, light tread that made no sound, he crossed the room to one of the wide-flung windows and stopped there.