“You will not, I hope, set out again for the East?”

“Oh! you know what a strange fellow I am.  It won’t do to challenge me to!”

Lissac laughed.

“I don’t challenge you at all, I only ask you not to leave the fortifications hereafter.  We shall gain everything.  You are not a Spaniard, you are a born Parisian, as I have already told you a hundred times.  If I were in your place, I would set myself up here and stick to Paris.  Since it is the best place in the world, why look for another?”

“My dear Guy,” interrupted the duke, who had not listened, “will you promise to answer me, with all frankness, a delicate, an absurd question, if you will, one of those questions that is not generally put, but which I am going to ask you, nevertheless, without preface, point-blank?”

“To it and to any others that you put me, my dear duke, I will answer as an honest man and a friend should.”

“Have you been much in love with Mademoiselle Kayser?”

“Very much.”

“And has she loved you—­a little?”

“Not at all.”

“That is not what she has just told me.”

“Ah!” said Lissac, as he threw away his cigar.  “You spoke of me, then?”

“She told me that she believed she loved you sincerely.”

“That is just what I had the pleasure of telling you.”

“And—­Marianne?—­”

“Marianne?” repeated Lissac, who perfectly understood the question from De Rosas’s hesitation.

“My dear friend, when a man feels sufficiently anxious, or sufficiently weak, or sufficiently smitten, whichever you please, to stake his life on the throw of the dice, he is permitted to put one of those misplaced questions to which I have just referred.  Well! you can tell me what, perhaps, none other than I would dare to ask you:  Have you been Marianne’s lover?”

Before replying, Guy took the arm of the duke in a friendly way, and, leaning upon it, felt that it trembled nervously.  Then, touching his hand by chance, he observed that Rosas was in a burning fever.

“My dear fellow, it is the everlasting question of honor between men and of duty to a woman that you put before me.  Had I been Marianne’s lover, I should be bound to tell you that Marianne had never been my mistress.  These falsehoods are necessary.  No; I have not been Marianne’s lover, but I advise you, if you do not wish to be perfectly miserable, not to seek to become so.  You are one of those men who throw their hearts open as wide as a gateway.  She is a calculating creature, who pursues, madly enough I admit, without consistency or constancy in her ideas, any plan that she may have in view.  She might be flattered to have you as a suitor, as I was, or as a lover, as I have been assured others were.  I do not affirm this, remember; but she will never be moved by your affection.  She is a pure Parisian, and is incapable of loving you as you deserve, but you could not deceive her, as they say she has been.”