And even as he spoke he struck at him with the gauntlet he held in his hand, muttering, "I loved her, I loved her, and I will slay you." Then said again, "Answer ere I slay you."
"I will answer you," said Martin quietly still--so quietly, yet ominously, that, had the man before him not been a soldier, he would have been well advised to flee from out the yard. "But it must be later; when I have stretched you at my feet for your insolence. You shall have the explanation when I have paid you back that blow, when your soul is hurrying to join your victims of this morning."
His blood was up now. The abusive words of the soldier; the sting of the heavy gauntlet still upon his cheek; perhaps, though that he scarce recognized, the feeling of hate against this swashbuckler for having dared to dream of loving Urbaine--all combined to make him resolute to kill the man before him. Also the horror, the disgust, that every effort he had made, every danger he had run, should be subjected to such misinterpretation, added to the accusation, if any addition were needed, that doubtless he had murdered her. For the first time in the course of this unholy war his weapon was unsheathed, about to be used. It should not find its scabbard again till it was wet with this man's life blood.
"Have I been mistaken?" the soldier said, astonished by his words, above all by his calm. "Made some strange error?"
"You have. No greater in your life than that foul blow. Put up your weapon before you, or I run you through as you stand here. Quick, en garde. I am neither 'woman, babe, nor vieillard.'"
"If it must be, it must----"
"It must!"
"Soit! If you will have it so."
The yard was large enough for any pair of escrimeurs to make fair play in, yet had it been smaller it would have well sufficed, as the dragoon found. Found that he had his master here before him, a man in whose hands he was a child; a fencer who would not let him move from the spot he was on, except backward slowly to the wall. And that not by his own desire, but because the iron wrist in front of him rendered resistance to its owner's will impossible.
Sword-play such as this he had never known, nor an adversary who parried every thrust as he made it, yet never lunged himself, reserving, doubtless, all his strength for that lunge at last. Strength to thrust through muscle and chest-wall the blade which would pierce his heart.