pivoted, and rushing, swung right and left, missing by inches.
Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He rushed again,
launching another vicious blow that threw him partly off his balance.
Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet from under him, sent him
sprawling on the moss.

Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had come
about. Yet the manner of its unfolding was not as she had visualized it
when she saw Fyfe near at hand. She saw now a side of her husband that
she had never glimpsed, that she found hard to understand. She could
have understood him beating Monohan senseless, if he could. A murderous
fury of jealousy would not have surprised her. This did. He had not
struck a blow, did not attempt to strike.

She could not guess why, but she saw that he was playing with Monohan,
making a fool of him, for all Monohan's advantage of height and reach.
Fyfe moved like the light, always beyond Monohan's vengeful blows,
slipping under those driving fists to slap his adversary, to trip him,
mocking him with the futility of his effort.

She felt herself powerless to stop that sorry exhibition. It was not a
fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay something
else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's speech. Here and
now, they had forgotten her at the first word. They were engaged in a
struggle for mastery, sheer brute determination to hurt each other,
which had little or nothing to do with her. She foresaw, watching the
odd combat with a feeling akin to fascination, that it was a losing game
for Monohan. Fyfe was his master at every move.

Yet he did not once attempt to strike a solid blow, nothing but that
humiliating, open-handed slap, that dexterous swing of his foot that
plunged Monohan headlong. He grinned steadily, a cold grimace that
reflected no mirth, being merely a sneering twist of his features.
Stella knew the deadly strength of him. She wondered at his purpose, how
it would end.

The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging of
those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring the
rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood panting with
his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for Fyfe's body.

Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as Monohan
was, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow that landed
near his heart, and while he staggered from that, c