'Vincy, do not tempt me. You are only a child, and it is my duty to think for both of us. Come, come! Listen, René--I know all. Do you understand? All--yes, all. I arrived yesterday. Your sister told me that you were angry with me, and a good many other things that opened my eyes. Your silence had frightened me. I thought that you had betrayed me with Colette. Fool that she is! Fortunately she hadn't the sense to guess that there was my vulnerable point. On leaving here I went to her house. I found her alone. She told me what she had done--what she had told you, and gloried in it, the hussy. Then I did what was right.' Here he began to march up and down the room, absorbed in recollections of the scene he described and almost oblivious of the poet's presence. 'I beat her--beat her like a madman. It did me good. I flung her to the ground and rained blow upon blow until she cried "Mercy! mercy!" I could have killed her--and taken a delight in it. How beautiful she looked, too, with her hair all tumbling about and her dress hanging in shreds where I had torn it from her snowy shoulders. Then she grovelled at my feet, but I was relentless, and left the house. She can show the marks on her body to her next lover if she likes, and tell him from whom she got them. How it relieves one to be a brute sometimes!' Then, suddenly stopping before René, he said, 'And all because she had touched you. Yes or no,' he cried, in his same angry tone, 'is it on account of what this jade told you that you are angry with me?' 'It is on that account,' replied René coldly. 'Very well,' said Claude, taking a seat, 'then we can talk. There must be no misunderstanding this time, so I shall be as plain as I possibly can. If I understand rightly, this wretch of a girl has told you two things. Let us proceed in order. This is the first--that I told her you were intimate with Madame Moraines. Excuse me,' he added, as the poet made a gesture. 'Between us two, in a matter affecting our friendship, I don't care a rap for the conventionalities that forbid us to mention a woman's name. I am not conventional myself, and so I mention her. Infamy number one. Colette told you a lie. This was exactly what I had said to her--I recollect the words as though it were yesterday, and regretted them before they had left my mouth--"I think poor René is falling in love with Madame Moraines." The only thing I went by was your embarrassed manner when mentioning her to me. But Colette had seen you sitting next to her at supper and paying her great attention. We had joked about the matter--as people will joke about these things--without attaching much importance to it. At least, I didn't--but all that's nothing. You were my friend. Your feeling might have been a serious one--it was, as it happened. I was wrong, and I frankly apologise in spite of the insult which, on the word of this vile drab, you have just offered me--me, your best and oldest friend!'