Kreisler, from twenty yards off, stared through his glasses at the group of people he had assembled, as though he had been examining the enemy through binoculars. Obediently, erect and still, he appeared rather amazed at what was occurring. Soltyk, in rear of the others, struggled with his bile. He slipped into his mouth a sedative tablet, oxide of bromium and heroin. This made him feel more sick. For a few moments he stood still in horror, expecting to vomit at every moment. The blood rushed to his head and covered the back of his neck with a warm liquid sheet. Kreisler’s look of surprise deepened. He had seen Soltyk slipping something into his mouth, and was puzzled and annoyed, like a child. What was he up to? Poison was the only guess he could give. What on earth⸺? Having taken part in many _mensurs_ he knew that for this very serious duel his emotions were hardly adequate. His nervous system was as quiescent as a corpse’s. He became offended with his phlegm. All this instinctive resistance to the idea of Death, the indignity of being nothing, was rendered empty by his premature insensitiveness. He tried to visualize and feel. In a few minutes he might be dead! That had so little effect that he almost laughed. Then he reflected that that man over there might in a few minutes be wiped out. He would become a disintegrating mess, uglier than any vitriol or syphilis could make him. All that organism he, Kreisler, would be turning into dung, as though by magic. He, Kreisler, is insulted. The sensations and energies of that man deny him equality of existence. He, Kreisler, lifts his hand, presses a little bar of steel, and the other is swept away into the earth. Heaven knows where the insulting spirit goes to. But the _physical disfigurement_ at least is complete. He went through it laboriously. But it fell flat as well. He was too near the event to benefit by his fancy. Possibilities were weakened by the nearness of Certainty. His momentary resentment with Bitzenko survived, and he next became annoyed at being treated like an object, as he felt it. He was not deliberately conscious of much. But, try as he would to elude the disgraces and besmirchings of death, people refused to treat him as anything but a sack of potatoes. There four or five men had been arguing about him for the last five minutes, and they had not once looked his way. But clearly Bitzenko was defending _his_ duel. Why should Bitzenko go on disposing of him in this fashion? He took everything for granted; he never so much as appealed to him, even once. Had Bitzenko been commissioned to hustle him out of existence? But Soltyk. There was that fellow again slipping something into his mouth! A cruel and fierce sensation of mixed real and romantic origin rose hotly round his heart. He _loved_ that man! But because he loved him he wished to plunge a sword into him, to plunge it in and out and up and down! Why had pistols been chosen?