“I am willing to forgo the duel at once on one condition. If Herr Soltyk will give me a kiss, I will forgo the duel!” He smiled archly and expectantly at Staretsky. “I don’t know what you mean!” “Why, a kiss. You know what a kiss is, my dear sir.” “I shall consider you out of your mind, if⸺” “That is my condition.” Soltyk had come up behind Staretsky. “What is your _condition_?” he asked loudly. Kreisler stepped forward so quickly that he was beside him before Soltyk could move. With one hand coaxingly extended towards his arm, he was saying something, too softly for the others to hear. He had immobilized everybody by his rapid action. Surprise had shot their heads all one way. They stood, watching and listening, screwed into astonishment as though by deft fingers. His soft words, too, must have carried sleep. Their insults and their honey clogged up his enemy. A hand had been going up to strike. But at the words it stopped dead. So much new matter for anger had been poured into the ear that it wiped out all the earlier impulse. Action must be again begun right down from the root. Kreisler thrust his mouth forward amorously, his body in the attitude of the eighteenth-century gallant, as though Soltyk had been a woman. The will broke out frantically from the midst of bandages and a bulk of suddenly accruing fury. Soltyk tore at _himself_ first, writhing upright, a statue’s bronze softening, suddenly, with blood. He became white and red by turns. His blood, one heavy mass, hurtled about in him, up and down, like a sturgeon in a narrow tank. All the pilules he had taken seemed acting sedatively against the wildness of his muscles. The bromium fought the blood. His hands were electrified. Will was at last dashed all over him, an Arctic douche. The hands flew at Kreisler’s throat. His nails made six holes in the flesh and cut into the tendons beneath. Kreisler was hurled about. He was pumped backwards and forwards. His hands grabbed a mass of hair; as a man slipping on a precipice gets hold of a plant. Then they gripped along the coat-sleeves, connecting him with the engine he had just overcharged with fuel. A sallow white, he became puffed and exhausted. “Acha—acha—” a noise, the beginning of a word, came from his mouth. He sank on his knees. A notion of endless violence filled him. “Tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun!” He fell on his back, and the convulsive arms came with him. The strangling sensation at his neck intensified. Meanwhile a breath of absurd violence had smitten everywhere. Staretsky had said: “That _crapule_ is beneath contempt! Pouah!—I refuse to act. Whatever induced us⸺” Bitzenko had begun a discourse. Staretsky turned on him, shrieking, “Foute-moi la paix, imbécile!” At this Bitzenko rapped him smartly on the cheek. Staretsky, who spent his mornings sparring with a negro pugilist, gave him a blow between the eyes, which laid him out insensible.