Another moment, and I should have been inside. My hand was already on the latch, when some one, who had been sitting on the stone bench in the shadow under the window, sprang up, and hurried to stop me. It was Louis de St. Alais. He reached me before I could open the door, and, thrusting himself in front of me, set his back against the panels. "Stop, man! for God's sake, stop!" he cried passionately, yet kept his voice low. "What can one do against two hundred? Go back, man, go back, and I will----" "_You will!_" I answered with fierce contempt, yet in the same low tone--the ushers were staring curiously at us from the door by which I had entered. "You will? You will do, I suppose, as much as you did last night, Monsieur." "Never mind that now!" he answered earnestly; though he winced, and the colour rose to his brow. "Only go! Go to Saux, and----" "Keep out of the way!" "Yes," he said, "and keep out of the way. If you will do that----" "Keep out of the way?" I repeated savagely. "Yes, yes; then everything will blow over." "Thank you!" I said slowly; and I trembled with rage. "And how much, may I ask, are you to have, M. le Comte, for ridding the Assembly of me?" He stared at me. "Adrien!" he cried. But I was ruthless. "No, Monsieur le Comte--not Adrien!" I said proudly; "I am that only to my friends." "And I am no longer one?" I raised my eyebrows contemptuously. "_After last night?_" I said. "After last night? Is it possible, Monsieur, that you fancy you played a friendly part? I came into your house, your guest, your friend, your all but relative; and you laid a trap for me, you held me up to ridicule and odium, you----" "I did?" he exclaimed. "Perhaps not with your own voice. But you stood by and saw it done! You stood by and said no word for me! You stood by and raised no finger for me! If you call that friendship----" He stopped me with a gesture full of dignity. "You forget one thing, M. le Vicomte," he said, in a tone of proud reticence. "Name it!" I answered disdainfully. "That Mademoiselle de St. Alais is my sister!" "Ah!" "And that, whether the fault was yours or not, you last evening treated her lightly--before two hundred people! You forget that, M. le Vicomte." "I treated her lightly?" I replied, in a fresh excess of rage. We had moved, as if by common consent, a little from the door, and by this time were glaring into one another's eyes. "And with whom lay the fault if I did? With whom lay the fault, Monsieur? You gave me the choice--nay, you forced me to make choice between slighting her and giving up opinions and convictions which I hold, in which I have been bred, in which----" "_Opinions!_" he said more harshly than he had yet spoken. "And what are, after all, opinions? Pardon me, I see that I annoy you, Monsieur. But I am not philosophic; I have not been to England; and I cannot understand a man----"