k, but I would fool him on
the time by being over-quick. And I was quick. As I said, we had been
at work scarcely a minute when it happened. Quick? That thrust and
lunge of mine were one. A snap of action it was, an explosion, an
instantaneousness. I swear my thrust and lunge were a fraction of a
second quicker than any man is supposed to thrust and lunge. I won the
fraction of a second. By that fraction of a second too late Fortini
attempted to deflect my blade and impale me on his. But it was his blade
that was deflected. It flashed past my breast, and I was in--inside his
weapon, which extended full length in the empty air behind me--and my
blade was inside of him, and through him, heart-high, from right side of
him to left side of him and outside of him beyond.

It is a strange thing to do, to spit a live man on a length of steel. I
sit here in my cell, and cease from writing a space, while I consider the
matter. And I have considered it often, that moonlight night in France
of long ago, when I taught the Italian hound quick and brilliant. It was
so easy a thing, that perforation of a torso. One would have expected
more resistance. There would have been resistance had my rapier point
touched bone. As it was, it encountered only the softness of flesh.
Still it perforated so easily. I have the sensation of it now, in my
hand, my brain, as I write. A woman's hat-pin could go through a plum
pudding not more easily than did my blade go through the Italian. Oh,
there was nothing amazing about it at the time to Guillaume de Sainte-
Maure, but amazing it is to me, Darrell Standing, as I recollect and
ponder it across the centuries. It is easy, most easy, to kill a strong,
live, breathing man with so crude a weapon as a piece of steel. Why, men
are like soft-shell crabs, so tender, frail, and vulnerable are they.

But to return to the moonlight on the grass. My thrust made home, there
was a perceptible pause. Not at once did Fortini fall. Not at once did
I withdraw the blade. For a full second we stood in pause--I, with legs
spread, and arched and tense, body thrown forward, right arm horizontal
and straight out; Fortini, his blade beyond me so far that hilt and hand
just rested lightly against my left breast, his body rigid, his eyes open
and shining.

So statuesque were we for that second that I swear those about us were
not immediately aware of what had happened. Then Fortini gasped and
coughed