There was a mocking glint in his eyes.  It was as though with a smile he weighed her resistance, displaying it to herself as a quantity wholly negligible.

“I think you begin to remember now,” he suggested.

And quite suddenly Chris saw what he had with subtlety set about teaching her, that to attempt to fence with him was useless.

“Yes, I remember,” she said, and there was a hint of most unwonted malice in her capitulation.  “Didn’t I see you wounded in a duel?”

He smiled, and she saw his teeth.  “If my memory be correct it was to madame herself that I owed that wound.”

She felt the quick blood rush to her face.  He had spoken with double entendre, but she did not perceive it until too late.  She only remembered suddenly and overwhelmingly that the duel had been fought on her account, because of some evil word which this man had spoken of her in Bertrand’s hearing.  She could well believe it of him—­the sneering laugh, the light allusion, the hateful insinuation underlying it.  She was beginning to look upon the evil of the world with comprehending eyes—­she, Chris, the gay of heart, the happy bird of Bertrand’s paradise whom no evil had ever touched.  And though she shrank from it as one dreading pollution, she dared not turn her back.

He went on with more daring mockery, still with lips that smiled.  “Ah!  I see you remember.  That duel was an affair of interest to you, hein?  You were—­the woman in the case.”

He leered at her intolerably, twisting his moustache.

But that was more than Chris could endure.  He had taken her by surprise indeed, but he should not see her routed thus easily.  She lifted her dainty head and confronted him with pride.

“Whatever the cause of the duel,” she said very distinctly, “it was no concern of mine, and it was by the merest accident that I witnessed it.  But in any case it is not a matter of sufficient importance to discuss now.  Shall we go on?”

She put the question abruptly, with a little inward tremor, for the path was narrow and he had come to a stand immediately in front of her.  He made a slight movement as if deprecating the obligation to detain her.  His eyes were suddenly very evil and so intent that she could not avoid them.  Yet still he smiled as though the situation amused him.

“But you joke!” he protested, with a snap of the fingers.  “I did not suggest that it could be a matter of importance.  It was all a bagatelle, a fairy-tale, that should not have had so serious an end.  And your husband—­he has heard the fairy-tale also?  Or was it not of sufficient importance to recount to him?”

She would have turned from him at that, even though it had meant ignominious flight, but his eyes held her, and she dared not.  She could only stand motionless, feeling her very heart grow cold.

Softly, jeeringly, he went on, still toying with the moustache that did not hide his smiling lips.  “You have not told him yet?  Ah! but it would amuse him.  That night you passed with the fairies, a siren among the sirens, has he never heard of that?  But you should tell him that!  Or was it perhaps only a joke a deux, and not a trois?  I have heard that the English husband can be strict, and you have found it so to your cost, hein?”