Through the least of pauses, the merest fragment of a second, a time measureless in its lapse to one whose every function was frozen in paralysis of fear, a single thought persisted: Another instant and I shall be as Lynn.... Nelly's eyes were burning like black malignant opals in a countenance at once luminous and wan. Death's icy grin glimpsed in the play of light along that blunt blue barrel. Lucinda felt as one caught fast in the pitiless jaws of some tremendous vice whose pinch stilled the beating of her heart and arrested her labouring lungs.
Then abruptly through the window a dark body hurled and fastening upon the woman's back, swinging her aside, the pistol detonated with a bellow, the bullet plumped into the wall close by Lucinda's head.
She heard a voice crying out again and again: "Bel! Bel! Bel! ..."
Her own voice....
For an indeterminable time she hung in dread upon the issue of that swaying combat: while Bel clung to the woman's arm, muttering and panting in futile efforts to wrest her weapon away; while Nelly clawed, bit, kicked, pounded her free fist repeatedly into Bel's face, and wrenched madly at her captive wrist.
Of a sudden, from her hand a spiteful tongue of fire licked out at Bel, his right arm flailed back and fell useless, agony convulsed his features; and free, the woman bounded away and with the laugh of a maniac swung the pistol to bear upon his head.
Lucinda's faculties clicked together then as gears mesh when the motor has been idling; the call of the emergency met with response in the form of instant and direct action. Without knowing what she did, she flung herself upon Nelly's arm and bore it down. With deflected muzzle the pistol exploded for the last time. Dropping it, Nelly turned on Lucinda and dealt with her as might a madwoman. Impressions grew confused beyond assortment, of flopping wildly this way and that, of hot breath beating into her face, of her bare flesh suffering a rain of cruel blows; of elemental lusts to maim and kill awakening from lifelong slumber, in this moment of close grips with a warm, living, hating and hateful human body....
Thrown off without warning, how she couldn't guess, she felt herself reeling back, tripping, falling. Something struck the back of her head a stunning blow, and she knew flickering nausea while dense night like a moving cloud on every hand closed in upon her, and the world, in the likeness of a rainbow swirl streaked with fiery paths of sparks, guttered into blank nullity....
Nothingness absolute and still received her, harboured her for a space, spewed her back into life again.
Cold rain spattering cheeks and brows ... once more the heart-rending perfume of roses ... anguish incomparable racking her temples ... her heart a wild thing caged ... ammonia in strangling whiffs....