She listened very attentively.  When he had done she sighed; her face was very thoughtful.

“That is much what I was told,” she said.  “But it was added that M. de La Tour d’Azyr had gone to the theatre expressly for the purpose of breaking finally with La Binet.  Do you know if that was so?”

“I don’t; nor of any reason why it should be so.  La Binet provided him the sort of amusement that he and his kind are forever craving... "

“Oh, there was a reason,” she interrupted him.  “I was the reason.  I spoke to Mme. de Sautron.  I told her that I would not continue to receive one who came to me contaminated in that fashion.”  She spoke of it with obvious difficulty, her colour rising as he watched her half-averted face.

“Had you listened to me... " he was beginning, when again she interrupted him.

“M. de Sautron conveyed my decision to him, and afterwards represented him to me as a man in despair, repentant, ready to give proofs — any proofs — of his sincerity and devotion to me.  He told me that M. de La Tour d’Azyr had sworn to him that he would cut short that affair, that he would see La Binet no more.  And then, on the very next day I heard of his having all but lost his life in that riot at the theatre.  He had gone straight from that interview with M. de Sautron, straight from those protestations of future wisdom, to La Binet.  I was indignant.  I pronounced myself finally.  I stated definitely that I would not in any circumstances receive M. de La Tour d’Azyr again!  And then they pressed this explanation upon me.  For a long time I would not believe it.”

“So that you believe it now,” said Andre quickly.  “Why?”

“I have not said that I believe it now.  But... but... neither can I disbelieve.  Since we came to Meudon M. de La Tour d’Azyr has been here, and himself he has sworn to me that it was so.”

“Oh, if M. de La Tour d’Azyr has sworn... " Andre-Louis was laughing on a bitter note of sarcasm.

“Have you ever known him lie?” she cut in sharply.  That checked him.  “M. de La Tour d’Azyr is, after all, a man of honour, and men of honour never deal in falsehood.  Have you ever known him do so, that you should sneer as you have done?”

“No,” he confessed.  Common justice demanded that he should admit that virtue at least in his enemy.  “I have not known him lie, it is true.  His kind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth.  But I have known him do things as vile... "

“Nothing is as vile,” she interrupted, speaking from the code by which she had been reared.  “It is for liars only — who are first cousin to thieves — that there is no hope.  It is in falsehood only that there is real loss of honour.”

“You are defending that satyr, I think,” he said frostily.

“I desire to be just.”

“Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shall have resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr.”  He spoke bitterly.