“There!  Take it—­and make a better job this time,” he said.

The power in his voice seemed to force Joan to pick up the gun.

“What do—­you mean?” she queried, haltingly.

“Shoot me again!  Put me out of my pain—­my misery. ...  I’m sick of it all.  I’d be glad to have you kill me!”

“Kells!” exclaimed Joan, weakly.

“Take your chance—­now—­when I’ve no strength—­to force you. ...  Throw the gun on me. ...  Kill me!”

He spoke with a terrible impelling earnestness, and the strength of his will almost hypnotized Joan into execution of his demand.

“You are mad,” she said.  “I don’t want to kill you.  I couldn’t. ...  I just want you to—­to be—­decent to me.”

“I have been—­for me.  I was only in fun this time—­when I grabbed you.  But the feel of you! ...  I can’t be decent any more.  I see things clear now. ...  Joan Randle, it’s my life or your soul!”

He rose now, dark, shaken, stripped of all save the truth.

Joan dropped the gun from nerveless grasp.

“Is that your choice?” he asked hoarsely.

“I can’t murder you!”

“Are you afraid of the other men—­of Gulden?  Is that why you can’t kill me?  You’re afraid to be left—­to try to get away?”

“I never thought of them.”

“Then—­my life or your soul!”

He stalked toward her, loomed over her, so that she put out trembling hands.  After the struggle a reaction was coming to her.  She was weakening.  She had forgotten her plan.

“If you’re merciless—­then it must be—­my soul,” she whispered.  “For I can’t murder you. ...  Could you take that gun now—­and press it here—­and murder me?”

“No.  For I love you.”

“You don’t love me.  It’s a blacker crime to murder the soul than the body.”

Something in his strange eyes inspired Joan with a flashing, reviving divination.  Back upon her flooded all that tide of woman’s subtle incalculable power to allure, to charge, to hold.  Swiftly she went close to Kells.  She stretched out her hands.  One was bleeding from rough contract with the log wall during the struggle.  Her wrists were red, swollen, bruised from his fierce grasp.

“Look!  See what you’ve done.  You were a beast.  You made me fight like a beast.  My hands were claws—­my whole body one hard knot of muscle.  You couldn’t hold me—­you couldn’t kiss me. ...  Suppose you are able to hold me—­later.  I’ll only be the husk of a woman.  I’ll just be a cold shell, doubled-up, unrelaxed, a callous thing never to yield. ...  All that’s me, the girl, the woman you say you love—­ will be inside, shrinking, loathing, hating, sickened to death.  You will only kiss—­embrace—­a thing you’ve degraded.  The warmth, the sweetness, the quiver, the thrill, the response, the life—­all that is the soul of a woman and makes her lovable will be murdered.”