For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.

He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The
tentacle-like aërial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but
were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight
with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.

She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant
tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.

With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him
away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles,
and their sap dripped red.

Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head
reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and
the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting,
knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door,
and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a
brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the
windows at the end of the green-house. Then she re-entered. She tugged
now with renewed strength at Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought
the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the
grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him
into the open air.

Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one,
and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away
from the horror.