him in such a condition, and she was more frightened of him than
she had been of Dennin in the thick of the struggle. She could not
believe that this raging beast was her Hans, and with a shock she
became suddenly aware of a shrinking, instinctive fear that he
might snap her hand in his teeth like any wild animal. For some
seconds, unwilling to hurt her, yet dogged in his desire to return
to the attack, Hans dodged back and forth. But she resolutely
dodged with him, until the first glimmerings of reason returned and
he gave over.

Both crawled to their feet. Hans staggered back against the wall,
where he leaned, his face working, in his throat the deep and
continuous rumble that died away with the seconds and at last
ceased. The time for the reaction had come. Edith stood in the
middle of the floor, wringing her hands, panting and gasping, her
whole body trembling violently.

Hans looked at nothing, but Edith's eyes wandered wildly from
detail to detail of what had taken place. Dennin lay without
movement. The overturned chair, hurled onward in the mad whirl,
lay near him. Partly under him lay the shot-gun, still broken open
at the breech. Spilling out of his right hand were the two
cartridges which he had failed to put into the gun and which he had
clutched until consciousness left him. Harkey lay on the floor,
face downward, where he had fallen; while Dutchy rested forward on
the table, his yellow mop of hair buried in his mush-plate, the
plate itself still tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. This
tilted plate fascinated her. Why did it not fall down? It was
ridiculous. It was not in the nature of things for a mush-plate to
up-end itself on the table, even if a man or so had been killed.