She drew away from him, and, suddenly, on her knees, buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs.
“This—this is terrible—terrible!” she cried out. “Has that frightful stuff transformed you into an absolute fiend? Are you no longer even human?” Flushed, a curious look of hunger in his eyes, he gazed at her.
“I'm devilishly human in some respects!” His voice rose, out of control. “I want you! I have wanted you from the day I saw you.”
She shivered. Her hands felt suddenly icy as she pressed them against her face.
“Thank God then,” she breathed, “for this, at least—that you will never get me!”
“Won't I?” His voice rose higher, trembling with passion. “Won't I? By God, I will! The one thing in life I will have some way or another! You understand? I will! And do you think I would let him stand in the way? You drive me mad, Claire, with those wonderful eyes of yours, with that hair, those lips, that throat——”
“Stop!” She was on her feet, and in an instant had reached him, and with her hands upon his shoulders was shaking him fiercely with all her strength. “I hated you, despised you, loathed you before, but with that man dying here, you murderer, I——”
Her voice trailed off, strangled, choked. He had caught her in his arms, his lips were upon hers. She struggled like a tigress. And as they lurched about the room he laughed in mad abandon. She wrenched herself free at last, and slipped and fell upon the floor.
“Do you believe me now!” he panted. “I will have you! Neither this man nor any other will live to get you. His life is a snap of my fingers—so is any other life. It's you I want, and you I will have. And I'll tame you! Then I'll show you what love is.”
She was moaning now a little to herself. She crept to John Bruce and stared into his face. Dying! They were letting this man die. She tried to readjust the cloths upon the wound. She heard Doctor Crang laugh at her again. It seemed as though her soul were sinking into some great bottomless abyss that was black with horror. She did not know this John Bruce. She had told Doctor Crang so. It was useless to repeat it, useless to argue with a drug-steeped brain. There was only one thing that was absolute and final, and that was that a man's life was ebbing away, and a fiend, an inhuman fiend who could save him, but whom pleading would not touch, stood callously by, not wholly indifferent, rather gloating over what took the form of triumph in his diseased mind. And then suddenly she seemed so tired and weary. And she tried to pray to God. And tears came, and on her knees she turned and flung out her arms imploringly to the unkempt figure that stood over her, and who smiled as no other man she had ever seen had smiled before.