“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.” She rose suddenly, squarely confronting him, desperate now, driven to play the only card upon which she thought she might count. “Monsieur,” she said, “you did me the honour to-day to speak in certain terms; to... to allude to certain hopes with which you honour me.” He looked at her almost in fear. In silence, not daring to speak, he waited for her to continue. “I... I... Will you please to understand, monsieur, that if you persist in this matter, if... unless you can break this engagement of yours to-morrow morning in the Bois, you are not to presume to mention this subject to me again, or, indeed, ever again to approach me.” To put the matter in this negative way was as far as she could possibly go. It was for him to make the positive proposal to which she had thus thrown wide the door. “Mademoiselle, you cannot mean...” “I do, monsieur... irrevocably, please to understand.” He looked at her with eyes of misery, his handsome, manly face as pale as she had ever seen it. The hand he had been holding out in protest began to shake. He lowered it to his side again, lest she should perceive its tremor. Thus a brief second, while the battle was fought within him, the bitter engagement between his desires and what he conceived to be the demands of his honour, never perceiving how far his honour was buttressed by implacable vindictiveness. Retreat, he conceived, was impossible without shame; and shame was to him an agony unthinkable. She asked too much. She could not understand what she was asking, else she would never be so unreasonable, so unjust. But also he saw that it would be futile to attempt to make her understand. It was the end. Though he kill Andre-Louis Moreau in the morning as he fiercely hoped he would, yet the victory even in death must lie with Andre-Louis Moreau. He bowed profoundly, grave and sorrowful of face as he was grave and sorrowful of heart.