The touch of the steel in her hand carried her out beyond the last barrier of civilized thought. For a moment she was the savage through and through. With a scream like that of a wounded lioness whose cub is in danger, she sprang toward them, the knife uplifted.
Then she stopped. Something paralyzed her—generations of inherited inhibition, conscience, what you will. "O God!" she moaned miserably, as the weapon fell from her hand.
It clattered on the wooden floor close beside the two men. Philip looked up, and his white teeth gleamed in a grim smile. Claire realized what she had done—she had placed the means of certain triumph within reach of her lover's enemy. She stooped to regain the knife, but it was too late. Philip released his grip on Lawrence's throat, leaned over, and seized the blade.
It was a mistake. Lawrence was far past consciousness of what he was doing, but his body still instinctively obeyed his will. As the weight from his chest was eased for a moment, he writhed his body into a freer position and his arms struck out wildly.
Philip saw his danger and raised the knife. The scene passed in a second, but to Claire it was as if they were petrified for hours in that position—she half-kneeling there, her arm outstretched, and Philip astride Lawrence's body, holding the knife in midair. In that last picture, carved upon Claire's agonized gaze, all the Spaniard's beauty was gone forever—he was a monster, his face distorted, one eye closed, his smile broadening into a hideous dog-like grin.
Philip's arm came down. As it did so, it was struck from above by Lawrence's, swinging aimlessly in a wide sweep. The blade, deflected with double force, entered deep into Philip's breast.
For just one instant an expression of angry and almost ludicrous surprise leaped across the Spaniard's face as his teeth snapped shut. Then his whole body twisted round violently, rolled over, and lay still beside Lawrence's equally motionless form.
Claire tottered back into a chair, and stared at them stupidly. Silence reigned in the cabin where there had been chaos. Slowly from under Philip's body a red line spread to a blotch on the floor. Lawrence was lying there, his head almost touching it.
Claire gazed and gazed, while she felt as if she must faint from the dreadful illness which seized her. Suddenly Lawrence was sitting up, his blackened face growing less terrible to look upon. He put his hands to his throat, and then, as the pain in his lungs decreased, he rose unsteadily. For a moment he balanced himself carefully, rubbing his throat.
Then he cried hoarsely: "Claire!"