It did him no great harm; it might be taken for an enlivener; he was dead on his favourite spot the ensuing round, played postman on it.  So cleverly, easily, dancingly did he perform the double knock and the retreat, that Chumley Potts was moved to forget his wagers and exclaim:  ‘Racket-ball, by Jove!’

‘If he doesn’t let the fellow fib the wind out of him,’ Mallard addressed his own crab eyeballs.

Lord Fleetwood heard and said coolly:  ’Tightstrung.  I kept him fasting since he earned his breakfast.  You don’t wind an empty rascal fit for action.  A sword through the lungs won’t kill when there’s no air in them.’

That was printed in the ‘Few Words before the Encounter’, in the Book Of maxims for men.  Carinthia, hearing everything her husband uttered, burned to remind him of the similarity between his opinions and her father’s.

She was learning, that for some reason, allusions to her father were not acceptable.  She squeezed the hand of Madge, and felt a pressure, like a scream, telling her the girl’s heart was with the fight beneath them.  She thought it natural for her.  She wished she could continue looking as intently.  She looked because her husband looked.  The dark hills and clouds curtaining the run of the stretch of fields relieved her sight.

The clouds went their way; the hills were solid, but like a blue smoke; the scene here made them very distant and strange.  Those two men were still hitting, not hating one another; only to gratify a number of unintelligible people and win a success.  But the earth and sky seemed to say, What is the glory?  They were insensible to it, as they are not—­ they are never insensible to noble grounds of strife.  They bless the spot, they light lamps on it; they put it into books of history, make it holy, if the cause was a noble one or a good one.

Or supposing both those men loved the girl, who loved one of them!  Then would Carinthia be less reluctantly interested in their blows.

Her infant logic stumbled on for a reason while she repressed the torture the scene was becoming, as though a reason could be found by her submissive observation of it.  And she was right in believing that a reason for the scene must or should exist.  Only, like other bewildered instinctive believers, she could not summon the great universe or a life’s experience to unfold it.  Her one consolation was in squeezing the hand of the girl from time to time.

Not stealthily done, it was not objected to by the husband whose eye was on all.  But the persistence in doing it sank her from the benignity of her station to the girl’s level:  it was conduct much too raw, and grated on the deed of the man who had given her his name.

Madge pleased him better.  She had the right to be excited, and she was very little demonstrative.  She had—­well, in justice, the couple of them had, only she had it more—­the tone of the women who can be screwed to witness a spill of blood, peculiarly catching to hear;—­a tone of every string in them snapped except the silver string.  Catching to hear?  It is worth a stretching of them on the rack to hear that low buzz-hum of their inner breast . . .  By heaven! we have them at their best when they sing that note.