Bonbright looked up and nodded.  Dulac did not reply, but stared, crouching a little, his lips drawn a trifle back so that a glint of white showed between.

“You wanted to see me?” said Bonbright.

“Yes,” said Dulac.  The word was spoken so low, so tensely, that it hardly reached Bonbright’s ears.  That was all.  He said no more, but stood, haggard and menacing.

Bonbright eyed him, saw his drawn face, saw the hatred in his eyes.  Neither spoke, but eye held eye.  Bonbright’s hand moved toward a button on his desk, but did not touch it.  Somehow he was not surprised, not startled, not afraid—­yet he knew there was danger.  A word, a movement, might unleash the passions that seethed within Dulac. ...

Dulac stepped one step toward Bonbright, and paused.  The movement was catlike, graceful.  It had not been willed by Dulac.  He had been drawn that step as iron is drawn to magnet.  His eyes did not leave Bonbright’s.  Bonbright’s eyes did not leave Dulac’s.

It seemed minutes before Dulac made another forward movement, slowly, not lifting his foot, but sliding it along the rug to its new position. ...  Then immovability. ...  Then another feline approach.  Step after step, with that tense pause between—­and silence!

It seemed to Bonbright that Dulac had been in the room for hours, had taken hours to cross it to his desk.  Now only the desk separated them, and Dulac bent forward, rested his clenched fists on the desk, and held Bonbright’s eyes with the fire of his own. ...  His body moved now, bending from the waist.  Not jerkily, not pausing, but slowly, slowly, as if he were being forced downward by a giant hand. ...  His face approached Bonbright’s face.  And still no word, no sound.

Now his right hand moved, lifted.  He supported his weight on his left arm.  The right moved toward Bonbright, opening as it moved.  There was something inexorable about its movement, something that seemed to say it did not move by Dulac’s will, but that it had been ordained so to move since the beginning of time. ...  It approached and opened, fingers bent clawlike.

Bonbright remained motionless.  It seemed to him that all the conflict of the ages had centered itself in this man and himself; as if they were the chosen champions, and the struggle had been left to them ...  He was ready.  He did not seek to avoid it, because it seemed inevitable.  There could never be peace between him and Dulac, and, strangely enough, the thought was present in his brain that the thing was symbolical.  He was the champion of his class, Dulac the champion of his class—­between which there could never be peace and agreement so long as the classes existed.  He wondered if himself and Dulac had been appointed to abolish each other ...  In those vibrating seconds Bonbright saw and comprehended much.

The hand still approached.

Bonbright saw a change in the fire of Dulac’s eyes, a sudden upleaping blaze, and braced himself for the surge of resistance, the shock of combat.