e 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 back and, twining her fingers in his hair, tugged at his
head. Why she should choose to hinder him at this precise moment he
could not in the least understand. He did not try. It was all like
a very wicked and harassing dream. Twice, to save himself from being
pulled over, he had to rise and throw her off. He did this stoically,
without a word, kneeling down again at once to go on with his work. But
when the work was done he seized both her arms and held them down. Her
cap was half off, her face was red, her eyes glared with crazy boldness.
He looked mildly into them while she called him a wretch, a traitor and
a murderer many times in succession. This did not annoy him so much as
the conviction that in her scurries she had managed to scratch his face
abundantly. Ridicule would be added to the scandal of the story. He
imagined it making its way through the garrison, through the whole army,
with every possible distortion of motive and sentiment and circumstance,
s