Panting, snarling, uttering teeth and blasphemy, the Prussian recoiled like
a serpent, gathered himself together and launched headlong at Lanyard, only
to be met full tilt by a second blow and a third, each more merciless than
its predecessor, beating him down once more.
This time Lanyard did not wait for him to come back for punishment, but
closed in, catching him as he strove to rise, meeting each fresh effort
with ruthless accuracy, battering him into insanity of despair, so that
Ekstrom came back again and again without thought, animated only by
frenzied brute instinct to find the throat of his tormenter, and ever and
ever failing; till at length he crumpled and lay crushed and writhing, then
subsided into insensibility, was quite still but for heaving lungs and the
spasmodic clutchings of his broken and ensanguined fingers....
With a start, a broken sigh, a slight movement of the hand interpreting a
crushing sense of the futility of human passion, Lanyard relaxed, drew back
from standing over his antagonist, abstractedly found a handkerchief and
dried his hands, of a sudden so inexpressibly shamed and degraded in his
own sight that he dared not look the girl's way, but stood with hang-dog
air, avoiding her regard.
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