In those days their souls met in such combat as it seemed must end in murder itself.
"You will not conquer him," he said to her one morning, forcing himself near enough to speak.
"I will, unless he kills me," she answered, "and that methinks he will find it hard to do." "He will kill you," he said.

"I would, were I in his four shoes." "You would if you could," were her words; "but you could not with his bit in your mouth and my hand on the snaffle.

And if he killed me, still 'twould be he, not I, was beaten; since he could only kill what any bloody villain could with any knife.

He is a brute beast, and I am that which was given dominion over such.

Look on till I have done with him." And thus, with other beholders, though in a different mood from theirs, he did, until a day when even the most sceptical saw that the brute came to the fray with less of courage, as if there had at last come into his brain the dawning of a fear of that which rid him, and all his madness could not displace from its throne upon his back.
"By God!" cried more than one of the bystanders, seeing this, despite the animal's fury, "the beast gives way! He gives way! She has him!" And John Oxon, shutting his teeth, cut short an oath and turned pale as death.
From that moment her victory was a thing assured.