"'From this moment,' I said, 'I discharge myself of all duties towards you as your host. You are no longer my guest, and you will remain at this interview during my pleasure.'
"He made another attempt to leave the room, and as he accompanied it by violence, I seized his arms, and threw him to the ground. He rose, and stood trembling before me.
"'I make no excuse, madam,' I said to my wife, 'for the turn this scene has taken. It is unseemly for men to brawl in presence of a lady, but there are occasions when of two evils the least must be chosen. Should I find myself mistaken, I shall give to M. Gabriel the amplest apology he could desire. Let me recall to your mind the day on which M. Gabriel first entered my gates as my guest. I brought him to you, and presented him to you as a friend whom I esteemed, and whom I wished you also to esteem. You received him as a stranger, and I had no reason to suspect that he and you had been intimate friends, and that you were already well known to each other. You allowed me to remain in ignorance of this fact. Was it honest?'
"'It was not honest,' she replied.
"'It made me happy,' I continued, 'to see, after the lapse of a few days, that you found pleasure in his society, and I regarded him in the light of a brother to you. I trusted him implicitly, and although, madam, you and I have been most unhappy, I had no suspicion that there was any guilt in this, as I believed, newly-formed friendship.'
"'There was no guilt in it,' she said very firmly.
"'I receive your assurance, and believe it in the sense in which you offer it. But in my estimation the word I use is the proper word. In the concealment from me of a fact with which you or he should have hastened to make me acquainted; in the secret confidences necessarily involved in the carrying out of such an intimacy as yours; there was treachery from wife to husband, from friend to friend, and in that treachery there was guilt. By an accident, within the past month, a knowledge has come to me of a shameful scandal which, had I not nipped it in the bud, would have brought open disgrace upon my name and house--but the secret disgrace remains, and you have brought it into my family.'
"'A shameful scandal!' she exclaimed, and her white face grew whiter. 'Who has dared----'
"'The world has dared, madam, the world over whose tongue we have no control. The nature of the intimacy existing between you and M. Gabriel, far exceeding the limits of friendship, has provoked remark and comment from many of your guests, and we who should have been the first to know it, have been the last. From a lady stopping in my house I learnt that you and M. Gabriel were lovers before you and I met--that you were affianced. Madam, had you informed me of this fact you would have spared yourself the deepest unhappiness under which any human being can suffer. For then you and I would not have been bound to each other by a tie which death alone can sever. I have, at all events, the solace which right doing sometimes sheds upon a wounded heart; that solace cannot unhappily be yours. You have erred consciously, and innocent though you proclaim yourself, you have brought shame upon yourself and me. I pity you, but cannot help you further than by the action I intend to take of preventing the occurrence of a deeper shame and a deeper disgrace falling upon me. For M. Gabriel I have no feelings but those of utter abhorrence. I request him to remove himself immediately from my presence and from this house. This evening he will send for his paintings, which shall be delivered to his order. They will be placed in this summer-house. And in your presence madam, I give M. Gabriel the warning that if at any time, or under any circumstances, he intrudes himself within these walls, he will do so at his own peril. The protection which my honour--not safe in your keeping, madam--needs I shall while I live be able to supply.'
"This, in substance, is all that took place while my wife was with us. When she was gone I gave instructions that M. Gabriel's paintings and property should be brought to the summer-house immediately, and I informed him of my intentions regarding them and the room he had used as a study. He replied that I would have to give him a more satisfactory explanation of my conduct. I took no notice of the threat, and I carried out my resolve--which converted the study into a tomb in which my honour was buried. And on the walls of the study I caused to be inscribed the words 'The Grave of Honour.'