e whole pageant of the spring. And whenever his
eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, staring, hypnotic eyes of the
Marquis, they saw the little tuft of almond tree against the sky-line.
He had the feeling that if by some miracle he escaped he would be ready
to sit for ever before that almond tree, desiring nothing else in the
world.

But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a thing
lost, the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and he was
parrying his enemy's point with a kind of clockwork skill of which he
had hardly supposed himself capable. Once his enemy's point ran along
his wrist, leaving a slight streak of blood, but it either was not
noticed or was tacitly ignored. Every now and then he riposted, and once
or twice he could almost fancy that he felt his point go home, but as
there was no blood on blade or shirt he supposed he was mistaken. Then
came an interruption and a change.

At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet stare,
flashed one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway on his
right. Then he turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of a fiend,
and began to fight as if with twenty weapons. The attack came so fast
and furious, that the one shining sword seemed a shower of shining
arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the railway; but also he had
no need. He could guess the reason of the Marquis's sudden madness of
battle--the Paris train was in sight.

But the Marquis's morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme,
parrying, knocked his opponent's point far out of the fighting circle;
and the third time his riposte was so rapid, that there was no doubt
about the hit this time. Syme's sword actually bent under the weight of
the Marquis's body, which it had pierced.

Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a
gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis
sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at
his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood on it at all.

There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn fell
furiously on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The Marquis
was probably, in a general sense, a better fencer than he, as he
had surmised at the beginning, but at the moment the Marquis seemed
distraught and at a disadvantage. He fought wildly and even weakly, and
he constantly looked away at the railway line, almost as if