"Please let me say something. After all I am the principal person in this. If it hadn't been for me there would not have been any of this trouble. I married your son. I married him, not because I loved him, but because I wanted things that I thought that you could give me. I see now how wrong that was and that I must pay for doing such a thing. I am ready to do right by your son. I never would have tried to run away if it had not been for you—the other night. After that I was right to do everything I could to get away. I begged your son first—and he refused. You have had me watched during the last three weeks—every step that I have taken. What could I do but try to escape?
"We've failed, and because we've failed and because it has been all my fault I want you to punish me in any way you like but to let my two friends go. I was not wrong to try to escape." She threw up her head proudly, "I was right after the way you had behaved to me, but now it is different. I have brought them into this. They have done nothing wrong. You must let them go."
"You must let all of us go." Dunbar broke in hotly, starting forward to Hesther's side. "Do you think we're afraid of you, you old play-acting red-haired monkey? You just let us free or it will be the worse for you. Do you know where you'll be this time to-morrow? Beating your fancy coloured hair against a padded cell, and that's where you should have been years ago."
"No, no," Hesther broke in. "No, no, David. That's not the way. You don't understand. Don't listen to him. I'm the only one in this, I tell you—can't you hear me?—that I will stay. I won't try to run away, you can do anything to me you like. I'll obey you—I will indeed. Please, please— Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand. But I do. Let them go. They've done no harm. They only wanted to help me. They didn't mean anything against you. They didn't truly. Oh! let them go! Let them go!"
In spite of her struggle for self-control her terror was rising, her terror never for herself but now only for them. She knew, more than they, of what he was. She saw perhaps in his face more than they would ever see.
But Harkness saw enough. He saw rising into Crispin's eyes the soul of that strange hairy fetid-smelling animal between whose paws Crispin's own soul was now lying. That animal looked out of Crispin's eyes. And behind that gaze was Crispin's own terror.
Crispin said:
"This is very comforting for me. I have waited for this moment." Then Harkness came over to him and stood very close to him.
"Crispin, listen to me. It isn't the three of us who matter in this, it is yourself. Whatever you do to us we are safe. Whatever you think or hope you can't touch the real part of us, but for yourself to-night this is a matter of life or death.
"I may know nothing about medicine and yet know enough to tell you that you're a sick man—badly sick—and if you let this animal that has his grip on you get the better of you in the next two hours you're finished, you're dead. You know that as well as I. You know that you're possessed of an evil spirit as surely as the man with the spirits that cleared the Gadarene swine into the sea. It isn't for our sakes that I ask you to let us go to-night. Let us go. You'll never hear from any of us again. In the morning, in the decent daylight, you'll know that you've won a victory more important than any you've ever won in your life.