"You say that to me!" he said, stammering with rage. "You give orders to me!"
Michael felt a hand seize him by the lapel of his coat. It was like a bird, tremulous and aggressive, pausing for an instant in its blind impulse, before flying upward. He was aware of the blow that was coming, and raised his arm instinctively, both hands met as that of the young man whirled close to the face of the Prince. The latter, who was stronger, seized the ascending hand and held it motionless, in a firm grip, while at the same time he smiled in a gruesome fashion. His eyes contracted as his eyebrows arched in the smile. They became again the eyes of an Asiatic. His nostrils dilated as he breathed like a stallion. The remote ancestors of the Princess Lubimoff must have smiled thus in their moments of anger.
"Enough: I consider that I have received it," he said slowly, "Name two friends to confer with mine!"
And freeing that hand of Martinez, he turned his back on him, after making a deep bow. The movements of both men had been rapid. Only one of the doorkeepers, with his official cap, standing guard on the platform above the steps, had guessed that anything had happened; but his professional experience advised him to remain passive as long as there were no blows. He imagined that it was merely a dispute over some gambling affair. It would all be settled by an explanation, and forgotten after a winning! He had seen so many such things!
Prince Lubimoff reënters the Casino. He crosses the vestibule and the anteroom holding his head high, but without seeing any one, gazing straight ahead, with a faraway expression.
It seems to him that time has suddenly been reversed, causing him to return to the past with one bound. He is back in his youth. He walks arrogantly. He is surprised that the sound of his firm tread is not accompanied by the tinkling of spurs and the metallic scraping of a saber. At the same time he begins to see imaginary faces, faces of those who disappeared from the earth many years ago: the Cossack who had come from a distant garrison in Siberia to avenge his sister; a friend in the same regiment as the Prince, who died from a sword thrust in his breast after a tumultuous supper, while Lubimoff wept, suddenly awakening from his homicidal intoxication; the faces of others who had been present as mere witnesses, but who had died and were now resurrected in his memory, cold and insensible to remorse and vain regrets.
"The Colonel. Where in the devil is the Colonel!"
He crosses the gambling room, in quest of a gray head, with a straight part from the forehead to the back of the neck, dividing the glistening hair into two shining sections. He sees it finally rising above the back of a divan, between two women's hats, four eyes darkly bordered as though in mourning, and cheeks with wrinkles filled with white and rose-colored enamel. A terse sentence of the Prince interrupts the explanations of the war news with which the Colonel had been thrilling the two ladies.
"Colonel, an affair of honor. I intend to fight to-morrow. Look for another second."
Toledo seems disconcerted by this order. His first thought flies to Villa Sirena. He sees his black frock coat, the solemn vestment of honor ready to leave its prison. Then a cloud of doubt obscures this joyous thought. A duel! Would it be fitting now that men are fighting in masses of millions, giving their lives for something higher and more important than personal hatred? His training immediately smothers this scruple. "A gentleman should always be at the orders of another gentleman." Besides, it is his Prince. And ready to fulfill his mission, he asks the name of the adversary.