On the way scarce a word was said by anyone. I sat wrapped in my thoughts, brooding over my purpose and nursing with jealous care the plans I had formed. I was semi-conscious of the strange sensation that I was acting in obedience to some subtle outside force which was impelling me to pursue my present line of conduct. I was saturated with the conviction that I should come unharmed through the fight; and that great consequences to me were to follow from that night’s proceedings. The result was an indescribable and indeed half-weird sense of comparative detachment from my surroundings. I was moving forward toward an end of tragic importance; and the scene at the Café de l’Europe, the insult, the blow, the strange preliminaries of the duel, the very fight itself, were but so many necessary steps in the due achievement of the far greater end. Once, something of this found expression. I was conscious that my good friend Mayhew was completely baffled by a mood totally unlike any he had ever seen me in before, and I remember thinking that when the strain was over I would reassure him. I caught him looking wonderingly at me, and at length he asked, solicitously and almost wistfully— "Have you any private arrangements you wish me to make?" "There will be none to make, Silas. There will be no need. Nothing will happen to me to make them necessary." He received the answer gravely, with a nod of the head and a whispered, "I thought I’d ask;" and looked at me strangely and compassionately, as a man might look at a friend suddenly bereft of his senses. The look made me conscious for a second that my words of conviction must have sounded oddly; but the next instant the feeling passed and I was again considering how to use the victory which I felt I was going to win. In my manner I was perfectly cool and self-possessed, and when we reached the house I led the way up the staircase to the rooms I had been in before; and finding the first room I looked in empty, I said I would wait there while the preparations were completed. The task occupied nearly an hour, I was told afterwards, but to me it passed like half a dozen minutes. I was reviewing all I knew of my opponent’s character and temper, searching for the key which at present I could not find, and still animated by the irresistible conviction that I was on the eve of a discovery of vital import. I had not solved the problem when Captain Pescada came to fetch me.