Transfixed by terror, she stood and gazed at him, waiting dumbly, cold from head to foot, feeling as though her very heart had turned to stone.
Nearer he came, and yet nearer, soundlessly over the stones.

His eyes, gleaming, devilish, were to her as the eyes of a devouring monster.
In her agony she tried to shriek aloud, but her voice was gone, her throat seemed locked.

She was powerless.
Close to her, for a single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in anticipation of its touch, and shrank--shrank in every nerve though she made no outward sign of shrinking.
But on the instant, with a panther-like spring, sure, noiseless, deadly, another figure leapt suddenly across her vision.

There followed a violent struggle in front of her, a confused swaying to and fro, a cry choked instantly and terribly, the tinkling sound of steel falling upon stone.

And then both figures were on the ground almost at her feet, locked together in mortal combat, fighting, fighting like demons in a silence that throbbed with the tumult of unrestrained savagery.
Later she never could remember how long it took her to realise that the second apparition was Nick, or if she had known it from the first.
She felt herself hovering upon the brink of a great emptiness, a void immense, and yet all her senses were alive and tingling with horror.
With agonised perception of what was passing, she yet felt numbed: as though her body were dead, but still contained a vital, tortured soul.
And it was thus that she presently saw Nick's face bent above the black-bearded face of his enemy; and remembered suddenly and horribly a picture she had once seen of the devil in the wilderness.
With his knees he was gripping the writhing body of his fallen foe.
With his hands--it came upon her as she watched with a shock of anguished comprehension--he was deliberately and with deadly intention choking out the man's life.
"Curse you! Die!" she heard him say and his voice sounded like the snarl of a wild beast.