“Monsieur Anteoni has gone, I suppose, Madame?”

“Yes, he has gone.  I reached the garden safely, you see.”

“Batouch came later.  He was much ashamed when he found you had gone.  I believe he is afraid, and is hiding himself till your anger shall have passed away.”

She laughed.

“Batouch could not easily make me angry.  I am not like you, Monsieur Androvsky.”

Her sudden challenge startled him, as she had meant it should.  He moved quickly, as at an unexpected touch.

“I, Madame?”

“Yes; I think you are very often angry.  I think you are angry now.”

His face was flooded with red.

“Why should I be angry?” he stammered, like a man completely taken aback.

“How can I tell?  But, as I came in just now, you looked at me as if you wanted to punish me.”

“I—­I am afraid—­it seems that my face says a great deal that—­that—­”

“Your lips would not choose to say.  Well, it does.  Why are you angry with me?” She gazed at him mercilessly, studying the trouble of his face.  The combative part of her nature had been roused by the glance he had cast at her.  What right had he, had any man, to look at her like that?

Her blunt directness lashed him back into the firmness he had lost.  She felt in a moment that there was a fighting capacity in him equal, perhaps superior, to her own.

“When I saw you come from the priest’s house, Madame, I felt as if you had been there speaking about me—­about my conduct of yesterday.”

“Indeed!  Why should I do that?”

“I thought as you had kindly wished me to come—­”

He stopped.

“Well?” she said, in rather a hard voice.

“Madame, I don’t know what I thought, what I think—­only I cannot bear that you should apologise for any conduct of mine.  Indeed, I cannot bear it.”

He looked fearfully excited and moved two or three steps away, then returned.

“Were you doing that?” he asked.  “Were you, Madame?”

“I never mentioned your name to Father Roubier, nor did he to me,” she answered.

For a moment he looked relieved, then a sudden suspicion seemed to strike him.

“But without mentioning my name?” he said.

“You wish to accuse me of quibbling, of insincerity, then!” she exclaimed with a heat almost equal to his own.

“No, Madame, no!  Madame, I—­I have suffered much.  I am suspicious of everybody.  Forgive me, forgive me!”

He spoke almost with distraction.  In his manner there was something desperate.

“I am sure you have suffered,” she said more gently, yet with a certain inflexibility at which she herself wondered, yet which she could not control.  “You will always suffer if you cannot govern yourself.  You will make people dislike you, be suspicious of you.”

“Suspicious!  Who is suspicious of me?” he asked sharply.  “Who has any right to be suspicious of me?”