"You're hurting! You're breaking my arm! Kay! Kay! what are you doing to me?" she wailed.
Something—perhaps the sound of his own name falling from her lips for the first time—checked his mounting frenzy. She could feel every muscle in his body become rigidly inert.
"Kay!" she whispered, fastening herself to him convulsively. For a full minute she sustained his half-insane stare, then it altered, and her own eyes slowly closed, though her head remained upright on the rigid marble of her neck.
The crisis had been reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax, loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from his, to relax her stiffened fingers, unclasp her arms.
It was over. She could scarcely stand, felt blindly for support, rested so, and slowly unclosed her eyes.
"I've had to fight very hard for you," she whispered. "But I think
I've won."
He answered with difficulty.
"Yes—if you want the dog you fought for."
"It isn't what I want, Kay."
"All right, I guess I can face it through—after this…. But I don't know why you did it."