What then followed is like a dream in my mind. I heard the seconds consulting. I heard Dr. Pons' voice speaking in a tone of relief: "So then we are to have some music after all!" I held two warm hands in mine, and I heard myself saying: "Yes, yes, you will stay here. I shall not be long. Oh, no; I shall not be killed! I will return. To be killed would be too absurd now. Wait for me."
Then, leaning on De Brissac's arm, I was walking down the Avenue des Minimes, and now, sword in hand, I was fronting De Coigny.
* * * * *
He was backgrounded by the willows, all silvering to the breeze, and his hateful face filled me with a fury that rose in my throat and which I had to gulp down. He was the only thing that stood between me and the heaven that had just been revealed to me; he was there with a sword in his hand, as if to bar me out and cut me off for ever from it. He was everything I hated, and the power of hate had suddenly risen gigantic in my breast, shouting for his blood.
Then we fought, and I found myself commanding myself, just as a drunken man commands himself to stand straight and be cool. Sometimes I saw his face, and sometimes I saw it not, yet ever I knew that I held him with my eye as a fowler holds a bird in his hand.
Had anyone been wandering by the pool of the Minimes, he might have fancied that he heard the cry of a seagull—a single, melancholy cry; for it is crying thus that a man's soul escapes when he is stricken through the heart.
CHAPTER XXXVII MARGARET
"He is dead," said Dr. Pons.