It was a shrewd thrust at the pride of race that she accounted his paramount sentiment, that had as often lured him into error as it had urged him into good.

“I do not seek honour in it, mademoiselle, but — I must say it — justice.  The engagement, as I have explained, is not of my seeking.  It has been thrust upon me, and in honour I cannot draw back.”

“Why, what dishonour would there be in sparing him?  Surely, monsieur, none would call your courage in question?  None could misapprehend your motives.”

“You are mistaken, mademoiselle.  My motives would most certainly be misapprehended.  You forget that this young man has acquired in the past week a certain reputation that might well make a man hesitate to meet him.”

She brushed that aside almost contemptuously, conceiving it the merest quibble.

“Some men, yes.  But not you, M. le Marquis.”

Her confidence in him on every count was most sweetly flattering.  But there was a bitterness behind the sweet.

“Even I, mademoiselle, let me assure you.  And there is more than that.  This quarrel which M. Moreau has forced upon me is no new thing.  It is merely the culmination of a long-drawn persecution.

“Which you invited,” she cut in.  “Be just, monsieur.”

“I hope that it is not in my nature to be otherwise, mademoiselle.”

“Consider, then, that you killed his friend.”

“I find in that nothing with which to reproach myself.  My justification lay in the circumstances — the subsequent events in this distracted country surely confirm it.”

“And... " She faltered a little, and looked away from him for the first time.  “And that you... that you...  And what of Mademoiselle Binet, whom he was to have married?”

He stared at her for a moment in sheer surprise.  “Was to have married?” he repeated incredulously, dismayed almost.

“You did not know that?”

“But how do you?”

“Did I not tell you that we are as brother and sister almost?  I have his confidence.  He told me, before... before you made it impossible.”

He looked away, chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost wistful.

“There is,” he said slowly, musingly, “a singular fatality at work between that man and me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the other’s path... "

He sighed; then swung to face her again, speaking more briskly:  “Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge — no suspicion of this thing.  But...”  He broke off, considered, and then shrugged.  “If I wronged him, I did so unconsciously.  It would be unjust to blame me, surely.  In all our actions it must be the intention alone that counts.”

“But does it make no difference?”

“None that I can discern, mademoiselle.  It gives me no justification to withdraw from that to which I am irrevocably committed.  No justification, indeed, could ever be greater than my concern for the pain it must occasion my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself, mademoiselle.”