The surgeon did not hurry his movements.

“What’s the matter?  Dressing came off?  That’s amusing.  I’ve been busy in the hospital all day, but somebody has told me that he hadn’t a scratch.”

“Not the same duel probably,” growled moodily Lieutenant D’Hubert, wiping his hands on a coarse towel.

“Not the same....  What?  Another?  It would take the very devil to make me go out twice in one day.”  He looked narrowly at Lieutenant D’Hubert.  “How did you come by that scratched face?  Both sides too—­and symmetrical.  It’s amusing.”

“Very,” snarled Lieutenant D’Hubert.  “And you will find his slashed arm amusing too.  It will keep both of you amused for quite a long time.”

The doctor was mystified and impressed by the brusque bitterness of Lieutenant D’Hubert’s tone.  They left the house together, and in the street he was still more mystified by his conduct.

“Aren’t you coming with me?” he asked.

“No,” said Lieutenant D’Hubert.  “You can find the house by yourself.  The front door will be open very likely.”

“All right.  Where’s his room?”

“Ground floor.  But you had better go right through and look in the garden first.”

This astonishing piece of information made the surgeon go off without further parley.  Lieutenant D’Hubert regained his quarters nursing a hot and uneasy indignation.  He dreaded the chaff of his comrades almost as much as the anger of his superiors.  He felt as though he had been entrapped into a damaging exposure.  The truth was confoundedly grotesque and embarrassing to justify; putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself which made it come dangerously near a criminal offence.  Like all men without much imagination, which is such a help in the processes of reflective thought, Lieutenant D’Hubert became frightfully harassed by the obvious aspects of his predicament.  He was certainly glad that he had not killed Lieutenant Feraud outside all rules and without the regular witnesses proper to such a transaction.  Uncommonly glad.  At the same time he felt as though he would have liked to wring his neck for him without ceremony.

He was still under the sway of these contradictory sentiments when the surgeon amateur of the flute came to see him.  More than three days had elapsed.  Lieutenant D’Hubert was no longer officier d’ordonnance to the general commanding the division.  He had been sent back to his regiment.  And he was resuming his connection with the soldiers’ military family, by being shut up in close confinement not at his own quarters in town, but in a room in the barracks.  Owing to the gravity of the incident, he was allowed to see no one.  He did not know what had happened, what was being said or what was being thought.  The arrival of the surgeon was a most unexpected event to the worried captive.  The amateur of the flute began by explaining that he was there only by a special favour of the colonel who had thought fit to relax the general isolation order for this one occasion.