"Listen to me." He spoke quickly, wild with anxiety lest she should carry out her threat. "You are to give me that letter—at once. At once, do you hear? I don't want to hurt you, but I will have that letter, and you had better give it to me of your own free will."
"You shan't—you shan't." She spoke gaspingly, using all her force to got away from him. Handicapped by his very superiority, Herrick did not venture to put forth his full strength, but Eva, held back by no scruples, fought desperately to release her hands that she might fling the letter in the fire.
Quite suddenly she found herself free. Herrick, his very soul sickened within him at the physical encounter, had released her abruptly, trusting, perhaps, to some instinct of generosity which should lead her to surrender in the moment of victory.
But he trusted vainly. The second she was free Eva flung herself on to her knees by the brightly-blazing fire; and as Herrick, maddened by her action, bent roughly over her to try, even now, to save the precious letter, she thrust her hand almost within the bars that the fire might destroy the writing the more completely.
But her own haste was her undoing. The loose chiffon sleeve she wore brushed against the glowing coals as she pushed the letter frantically between the bars; and a bright tongue of flame shot suddenly up her arm and ignited the masses of filmy lace which disguised the thinness of her once softly-rounded bosom.
There was a sharp cry from Herrick, a shriek of terror from Eva; and then, as Herrick sprang aside to snatch up the heavy travelling-coat which would most effectually beat out the flames, Eva rushed frenziedly to the door, screaming at the top of her voice.
Again and again he tried to fling the coat round her burning form; but she had completely lost her head, and several valuable seconds were wasted before he caught her finally and wrapped her completely round in the thick, heavy folds of his big coat.
Quite suddenly he felt her collapse in his grasp; and when, having extinguished the flames, he unwrapped the coat from her slender figure, Herrick had a horrible conviction that he held a dead woman in his arms....
She was still alive, however, though terribly burned about the arms and body. For nearly a week she lay between life and death, a piteous little figure swathed in bandages.
By some miraculous chance, although her golden curls were singed and blackened, her face had escaped injury, and as he sat by her side in the darkened room, Herrick could trace in the pale and suffering features the face of the bonny Irish girl who had won his heart so completely in those far-off days of an Irish spring.