"He has gone out. Is it of him," in sudden enlightenment, "that you are afraid?"
He nodded sullenly. "Yes," he said; and then he paused, eyeing her in doubt if he could trust her. At last, "It is, but, if you dared do it, I know how I could draw his teeth! How I could"—with the cruel grin of the coward—"squeeze him! squeeze him!" and he went through the act with his nervous, shaking fingers. "I could hold him like that! I could hold him powerless as the dog that would bite and dare not!"
She stared at him. "You?" she said; it was hard to say whether incredulity or scorn were written more plainly on her face. "You?"
"I! I!" he replied, with the same gesture of holding something. "And I know how to put him in your power also!"
"In my power!"
"Ay."
Her face grew hard as if she too held her enemy passive in her grip. Then her lip curled, and she laughed in scorn. "Ay! And what must I do to bring that about? Something, I suppose, you dare not, Louis?"
"Something you can do more easily than I," he answered doggedly. "A small thing, too," he continued, clasping his hands in his eagerness and looking at her with imploring eyes. "A nothing, a mere nothing!"
"And yet it will do so much?"
"I swear it will."