“Quarrelled!” exclaimed the Vicomte with another little laugh. “Oh no, Father—Gilbert is too magnanimous to quarrel! He has not quarrelled with me. He has merely said things to me . . . intolerable, not to be borne from any man alive . . . and refused to answer for them. That is not quarrelling, is it?” And M. des Graves saw that Louis, that hater of emotion and of scenes, was quivering with passion. He began to have a pretty clear impression of what had taken place at the river. He got up and approached him. “Louis, this situation cannot go on.” The Vicomte looked him full in the face. “Gilbert could end it—if he would.” “How?” “By a very simple means, involving nothing more than a couple of swords. But he refuses to fight me.” “Ah!” said the older man quietly. And, despite his sympathy, he let the gleam of steel be seen in his own hand. “And so you think, Louis, that _you_ are the aggrieved party?” The unexpected attack for an instant staggered the furious young man. He swallowed down something that might have been an oath ere he answered curtly “I do. I have every right to think so. But I will not trouble you with my reasons. They are not worth your attention.” And he turned to go. “Louis . . . Louis!” said M. des Graves in a voice of such pain and tenderness that the Vicomte stopped. “It is no use, Father,” he replied wildly. “Nothing is any use; it is no use my having tried to behave with some show of honour—Gilbert says that I have none . . . perhaps he is right . . . if you say so, too . . . I had better go. . . .” But instead of going he sank slowly down on the nearest chair, and his head went down on his arms along the back of it. The priest stood there and looked sorrowfully down at the bowed head. For a long moment there was intense silence, into which only the clock on the mantelpiece intruded. At last he spoke. “I want to help you, Louis; I think you know that.” Louis lifted a pale, dangerous face. “I don’t know anything,” he said with extraordinary intensity. “I have no feelings about anybody in the world—except Gilbert. And I hate him. . . . Let me go!” The priest stood aside. “You can go, Louis. . . . Twenty years of comradeship and two days hatred. . . . Perhaps you can see better than I how it will end. God have mercy on all of us!” The Vicomte flashed out. “But he hates me, too! He must have hated me for months. All the time he knew, curse him . . . all the time that I thought I had hidden it . . . all the time that he was away in Brittany. . . .” And the stream broke its bounds at last, and all that he had suffered, all that he had foregone, his love, his struggle, his victory won for Gilbert’s sake, came pouring out, tinged with the passionate resentment which made Gilbert’s very name difficult to utter.