place
yielded to a flash of lightning--heat lightning, all glare and no
sound--and I caught an instantaneous vision of my father's figure
standing with gleaming things about him, which affected me at the moment
as supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been
weapons hanging on a wall.

"She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would not
need any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw something
in his hand and something in hers, and though I did not yet understand,
I felt myself turning deathly sick and gave a choking gasp which was
lost in the rush she made into the centre of the room, and the keenness
of her swift low cry.

"'Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!'

"A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife--this father
and mother--in this hole of dead tragedies and within the sight and
hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme more hideous for
ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!

"Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much too
dazed to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which engender
it. I only knew that something horrible--something beyond the conception
of my childish mind--was going to take place in the darkness before me;
and the terror of it made me speechless; would to God it had made me
deaf and blind and dead!

"She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as the
next fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also showed
the weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt reassured when I saw
that these were swords, for I had seen them before with foils in their
hands practising for exercise, as they said, in the great garret. But
the swords had buttons on them, and this time the tips were sharp and
shone in the keen light.

"An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were followed by
movements I could scarcely hear, but which were terrifying from their
very quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The swords had crossed.

"Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them might
have occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and when the glare
relit the great room again, they were already far apart. This called out
a word from him; the one sentence he spoke--I can never forget it:

"'Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall we
call it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we h