the other piece.
The two men stood tense and still, the master laboriously chewing his
bread, the servant staring with averted face, his fist clenched.

Then the young soldier started. The officer had pressed open the lid
of the mug again. The orderly watched the lid of the mug, and the white
hand that clenched the handle, as if he were fascinated. It was raised.
The youth followed it with his eyes. And then he saw the thin, strong
throat of the elder man moving up and down as he drank, the strong jaw
working. And the instinct which had been jerking at the young man's
wrists suddenly jerked free. He jumped, feeling as if it were rent in
two by a strong flame.

The spur of the officer caught in a tree-root, he went down backwards
with a crash, the middle of his back thudding sickeningly against
a sharp-edged tree-base, the pot flying away. And in a second the
orderly, with serious, earnest young face, and under-lip between his
teeth, had got his knee in the officer's chest and was pressing the chin
backward over the farther edge of the tree-stump, pressing, with all his
heart behind in a passion of relief, the tension of his wrists exquisite
with relief. And with the base of his palms he shoved at the chin, with
all his might. And it was pleasant, too, to have that chin, that hard
jaw already slightly rough with beard, in his hands. He did not relax
one hair's breadth, but, all the force of all his blood exulting in
his thrust, he shoved back the head of the other man, till there was a
little cluck and a crunching sensation. Then he felt as if his head went
to vapour. Heavy convulsions shook the body of the officer, frightening
and horrifying the young soldier. Yet it pleased him, too, to repress
them. It pleased him to keep his hands pressing back the chin, to feel
the chest of the other man yield in expiration to the weight of his
strong, young knees, to feel the hard twitchings of the prostrate body
jerking his own whole frame, which was pressed down on it.

But it went still. He could look into the nostrils of the other man,
the eyes he could scarcely see. How curiously the mouth was pushed out,
exaggerating the full lips, and the moustache bristling up from them.
Then, with a start, he noticed the nostrils gradually filled with blood.
The red brimmed, hesitated, ran over, and went in a thin trickle down
the face to the eyes.

It shocked and distressed him. Slowly, he got up. The body twitched and
sprawled there