My blood was up now, and I meant death too. He had given up all right to expect anything else, and I had no mind to let him off. If ever a man had earned death he had. He had heaped on me every indignity that one man could put on another, and to crown it all he had just tried to murder me. I would kill him with less compunction than one kills a dog; and I set about the task with the coolest deliberation and purpose.
The scene was a grim and ghastly one enough. The floor was all slippery in places with the blood of the man I had killed, whose body lay huddled up against the wall, as well as of the other who sat on the ground still spitting and coughing and mumbling and cursing from the fearful effects of my kick. In the middle we two stood fighting to the death, watching one another with the fire of hate and blood lust in our eyes and on our set faces: while Olga, all eagerness excitement and tension, stood in the doorway watching us with white drawn face and dilated eyes; the deeply drawn breath coming in spasms through her distended nostrils and slightly parted lips.
I forced the fight with all my power, and my blade flashed about my antagonist until all his skill was useless even to defend himself against my point, while any offensive tactic was out of the question. I wounded him three times, once so close to the heart that Olga cried out: and at length recalling the knack with which I had disarmed him in our former encounter, I used it now; and after a few more swift and cunning passes I whipped his sword from his grasp and sent it rattling to the other end of the place.
My eye flashed as I drew back my arm for the death thrust.
"Ah, don't, Alexis," cried Olga, in a sort of whisper of horror. "Don't kill him!"
It stopped me instantly, and my arm fell.
"As you will," I answered readily; "but he doesn't deserve it. You owe your life to the woman you've tried to wrong, not to me," I said to him, shortly. "Stand out of the way and let us pass."
He moved aside doggedly, eyeing us with surly sullen hate, as Olga, trembling violently now that the excitement was over, went on first, and I followed her through the stairway and down and out of the house.
When we reached the courtyard, the postchaise which I had ordered to follow us from the inn had arrived, and Olga and I entered it at once.
"Thank God, we are out of the house," was my companion's fervent exclamation, as the carriage turned into the road and we left the gloomy place behind us.