technique that was almost perfect. In addition, he enjoyed
over Andre-Louis physical advantages of strength and length of reach,
which rendered him altogether formidable. And he was cool, too; cool and
self-contained; fearless and purposeful. Would anything shake that calm,
wondered Andre-Louis?

He desired the punishment to be as full as he could make it. Not content
to kill the Marquis as the Marquis had killed Philippe, he desired
that he should first know himself as powerless to avert that death as
Philippe had been. Nothing less would content Andre-Louis. M. le Marquis
must begin by tasting of that cup of despair. It was in the account;
part of the quittance due.

As with a breaking sweep Andre-Louis parried the heavy lunge in which
that first series of passes culminated, he actually laughed--gleefully,
after the fashion of a boy at a sport he loves.

That extraordinary, ill-timed laugh made M. de La Tour d'Azyr's recovery
hastier and less correctly dignified than it would otherwise have been.
It startled and discomposed him, who had already been discomposed by
the failure to get home with a lunge so beautifully timed and so truly
delivered.

He, too, had realized that his opponent's force was above anything that
he could have expected, fencing-master though he might be, and on that
account he had put forth his utmost energy to make an end at once.

More than the actual parry, the laugh by which it was accompanied seemed
to make of that end no more than a beginning. And yet it was the end of
something. It was the end of that absolute confidence that had hitherto
inspired M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He no longer looked upon the issue as a
thing forgone. He realized that if he was to prevail in this encounter,
he must go warily and fence as he had never fenced yet in all his life.

They settled down again; and again--on the principle this time that the
soundest defence is in attack--it was the Marquis who made the game.
Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him
to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater
speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had
given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible
Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which
once more culminated in a lunge.

Expecting it now, Andre-Louis parried it by no more than a deflecting
touch. At the same moment he stepped suddenly forw