name," he said, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice that somehow
reminded Merryon of the hiss of a reptile, "is Leo Vulcan. You have
heard of me? Perhaps not. I am better known in the Western Hemisphere.
You ask me what I want?" He raised a brown, hairy hand and pointed
straight at the girl in Merryon's arms. "I want--my wife!"

Puck's cry of anguish followed the announcement, and after it came
silence--a tense, hard-breathing silence, broken only by her long-drawn,
agonized sobbing.

Merryon's hold had tightened all unconsciously to a grip; and she was
clinging to him wildly, convulsively, as she had never clung before. He
could feel the horror that pulsed through her veins; it set his own
blood racing at fever-speed.

Over her head he faced the stranger with eyes of steely hardness. "You
have made a mistake," he said, briefly and sternly.

The other man's teeth gleamed again. He had a way of lifting his lip
when talking which gave him an oddly bestial look. "I think not," he
said. "Let the lady speak for herself! She will not--I think--deny me."

There was an intolerable sneer in the last sentence. A sudden awful
doubt smote through Merryon. He turned to the girl sobbing at his
breast.

"Puck," he said, "for Heaven's sake--what is this man to you?"

She did not answer him; perhaps she could not. Her distress was terrible
to witness, utterly beyond all control.