He flicked them aside with his handkerchief.
How still it was! Or was it his life which had become so still?
It seemed as if the world must be noiseless, for not a sound of the life in other parts of the Palace came to him, not an echo or vibration of the city which stirred beyond the great gateway.

Was it the chilly hand of death passing over everything, and smothering all the activities?
His pulses, which, but a few minutes past, were throbbing and pounding like drums in his ears, seemed now to flow and beat in very quiet.

Was this, then, the way that murderers felt, that men felt who took human life--so frozen, so little a part of their surroundings?
Did they move as dead men among the living, devitalised, vacuous calm?
His life had been suddenly twisted out of recognition.

All that his habit, his code, his morals, his religion, had imposed upon him had been overturned in one moment.

To take a human life, even in battle, was against the code by which he had ever been governed, yet he had taken life secretly, and was hiding it from the world.
Accident?
But had it been necessary to strike at all?
His presence alone would have been enough to save the girl from further molestation; but, he had thrown himself upon the man like a tiger.