As he spoke Wilkins rose, and handed her the paper. She concealed the letter he had given her in her dress, then folded the pass between her fingers, and prepared to leave.
The head clerk had stood still until how, watching her with a strange, eager expression on his face; but as he saw her about to leave him he sprang suddenly forward, and throwing one of his huge arms about her waist, drew back her head with the other, and imprinted kiss after kiss upon her lips.
She struggled wildly, but silently; and at last, with an almost superhuman effort, freed herself from his grasp. She turned, as she did so, and lifting her small hand closely clenched, struck him furiously full in the mouth.
The blood gushed over his lips; and never, to the latest day of his existence, not even when he saw her lie cold and still in her coffin, did Guly forget the fearful expression in her pallid face, and the almost demoniacal glare in her black eye, as she marked the effect of her blow, and darted
by him like some frightened bird, escaped from the spoiler's net.
He shrank further into the darkness as she passed him, and saw her rush toward the back part of the building, where the large windows descended to the floor. She flung one up hastily, and leaped through it to the ground.
The next moment he heard the swift pattering of small feet in the alley, and the rustling of a woman's dress, as if some one were running.
The head clerk had thrown himself upon a couch, face downwards, after he received the blow, and Guly seeing he had been unobserved, thought best not to intrude upon him at this moment; and with a quiet, cat-like tread, and trembling violently with the excitement of the scene he had witnessed, he groped his way back to his own chamber.
An hour passed before he ventured to descend the stairs again; and then he found Wilkins sitting as he had seen him in the morning, at the big desk, with his coat off, reading.
"This is a late hour for you to be down stairs, my boy! What has happened to make you so pale? Are you sick?"