This enraged animal, thought D’Hubert, will have me against the wall directly.  He imagined himself much closer to the house than he was; and he dared not turn his head, such an act under the circumstances being equivalent to deliberate suicide.  It seemed to him that he was keeping his adversary off with his eyes much more than with his point.  Lieutenant Feraud crouched and bounded with a tigerish, ferocious agility—­enough to trouble the stoutest heart.  But what was more appalling than the fury of a wild beast accomplishing in all innocence of heart a natural function, was the fixity of savage purpose man alone is capable of displaying.  Lieutenant D’Hubert in the midst of his worldly preoccupations perceived it at last.  It was an absurd and damaging affair to be drawn into.  But whatever silly intention the fellow had started with, it was clear that by this time he meant to kill—­nothing else.  He meant it with an intensity of will utterly beyond the inferior faculties of a tiger.

As is the case with constitutionally brave men, the full view of the danger interested Lieutenant D’Hubert.  And directly he got properly interested, the length of his arm and the coolness of his head told in his favour.  It was the turn of Lieutenant Feraud to recoil.  He did this with a blood-curdling grunt of baffled rage.  He made a swift feint and then rushed straight forward.

“Ah! you would, would you?” Lieutenant D’Hubert exclaimed mentally to himself.  The combat had lasted nearly two minutes, time enough for any man to get embittered, apart from the merits of the quarrel.  And all at once it was over.  Trying to close breast to breast under his adversary’s guard, Lieutenant Feraud received a slash on his shortened arm.  He did not feel it in the least, but it checked his rush, and his feet slipping on the gravel, he fell backward with great violence.  The shock jarred his boiling brain into the perfect quietude of insensibility.  Simultaneously with his fall the pretty servant girl shrieked piercingly; but the old maiden lady at the window ceased her scolding and with great presence of mind began to cross herself.

In the first moment, seeing his adversary lying perfectly still, his face to the sky and his toes turned up, Lieutenant D’Hubert thought he had killed him outright.  The impression of having slashed hard enough to cut his man clean in two abode with him for awhile in an exaggerated impression of the right good will he had put into the blow.  He went down on his knees by the side of the prostrate body.  Discovering that not even the arm was severed, a slight sense of disappointment mingled with the feeling of relief.  But, indeed, he did not want the death of that sinner.  The affair was ugly enough as it stood.  Lieutenant D’Hubert addressed himself at once to the task of stopping the bleeding.  In this task it was his fate to be ridiculously impeded by the pretty maid.  The girl, filling the garden with cries for help, flung herself upon his defenceless