Compassion thrilled her.  ’A couple of hours!  Unhappy boy!  But do you not know that he is a dead shot?  He is famous for his aim.  He never misses.  He can do all the duellist’s wonders both with sword and pistol, and that is why he was respected when he refused the duel because he—­before these parents of mine drove him . . . and me!  I think we are both mad—­he despised duelling.  He!  He!  Alvan! who has challenged my father!  I have heard him speak of duelling as cowardly.  But what is he? what has he changed to?  And it would be cowardly to kill you, Marko.’

‘I take my chance,’ Marko said.

‘You have no chance.  His aim is unerring.’  She insisted on the deadliness of his aim, and dwelt on it with a gloating delight that her conscience approved, for she was persuading the youth to shun his fatal aim.

If you stood against him he would not spare you—­perhaps not; I fear he would not, as far as I know him now.  He can be terrible in wrath.  I think he would warn you; but two men face to face! and he suspecting that you cross his path!  Find some way of avoiding him.  Do, I entreat you.  By your love of me!  Oh! no blood.  I do not want to lose you.  I could not bear it.’

‘Would you regret me?’ said he.

Her eyes fell on his, and the beauty of those great dark eyes made her fondness for him legible.  He caused her a spasm of anguish, foreknowing him doomed.  She thought that haply this devoted heart was predestined to be the sacrifice which should bring her round to Alvan.  She murmured phrases of dissuasion until her hollow voice broke; she wept for being speechless, and turned upon Providence and her parents, in railing at whom a voice of no ominous empty sound was given her; and still she felt more warmly than railing expressed, only her voice shrank back from a tone of feeling.  She consoled herself with the reflection that utterance was inadequate.  Besides, her active good sense echoed Marko ringingly when he cited the usages of their world and the impossibility of his withdrawing or wishing to withdraw from the line of a challenge accepted.  It was destiny.  She bowed her head lower and lower, oppressed without and within, unwilling to look at him.  She did not look when he left her.

The silence of him encouraged her head to rise.  She stared about:  his phantom seemed present, and for a time she beheld him both upright in life and stretched in death.  It could not be her fault that he should die! it was the fatality.  How strange it was!  Providence, after bitterly misusing her, offered this reparation through the death of Marko.

Possibly she ought to run out and beseech Alvan to spare the innocent youth.  She stood up trembling on her legs.  She called to Alvan.  ’Do not put blood between us.  Oh!  I love you more than ever.  Why did you let that horrible man you take for a friend come here?  I hate him, and cannot feel my love of you when I see him.  He chills me to the bone.  He made me say the reverse of what was in my heart.  But spare poor Marko!  You have no cause for jealousy.  You would be above it, if you had.  Do not aim; fire in the air.  Do not let me kiss that hand and think . . .’