at you would leap from the Shlangenberg for
my sake, and that you would kill any one whom I might bid you kill.
Well, instead of such murders and tragedies, I wish only for a good
laugh. Go without answering me, and let me see the Baron give you a
sound thrashing with his stick."

"Then you throw me out a challenge?--you think that I will not do it?"

"Yes, I do challenge you. Go, for such is my will."

"Then I WILL go, however mad be your fancy. Only, look here: shall you
not be doing the General a great disservice, as well as, through him, a
great disservice to yourself? It is not about myself I am worrying--it
is about you and the General. Why, for a mere fancy, should I go and
insult a woman?"

"Ah! Then I can see that you are only a trifler," she said
contemptuously. "Your eyes are swimming with blood--but only because
you have drunk a little too much at luncheon. Do I not know that what I
have asked you to do is foolish and wrong, and that the General will be
angry about it? But I want to have a good laugh, all the same. I want
that, and nothing else. Why should you insult a woman, indeed? Well,
you will be given a sound thrashing for so doing."

I turned away, and went silently to do her bidding. Of course the thing
was folly, but I could not get out of it. I remember that, as I
approached the Baroness, I felt as excited as a schoolboy. I was in a
frenzy, as though I were drunk.

VI

Two days have passed since that day of lunacy. What a noise and a fuss
and a chattering and an uproar there was! And what a welter of
unseemliness and disorder and stupidity and bad manners! And I the
cause of it all! Yet part of the scene was also ridiculous--at all
events to myself it was so. I am not quite sure what was the matter
with me--whether I was merely stupefied or whether I purposely broke
loose and ran amok. At times my mind seems all confused; while at other
times I seem almost to be back in my childhood, at the school desk, and
to have done the deed simply out of mischief.

It all came of Polina--yes, of Polina. But for her, there might never
have been a fracas. Or perhaps I did the deed in a fit of despair
(though it may be foolish of me to think so)? What there is so
attractive about her I cannot think. Yet there IS something attractive
about her--something passing fair, it would seem. Others besides myself
she has driven to distraction. She is tall and straight, and very slim.
Her body looks as though