"In what way?"
"I had never hoped that the Fates would be so kind as to allow me to render a member of your family a slight service."
"I understand that you saved my life the other day, Monsieur Déroulède. I know that I am still in peril and that I owe my safety to you ..."
"Do you also know that your brother owed his death to me?"
She closed her lips firmly, unable to reply, wrathful with him, for having suddenly and without any warning, placed a clumsy hand upon that hidden sore.
"I always meant to tell you," he continued somewhat hurriedly; "for it almost seemed to me that I have been cheating you, these last few days. I don't suppose that you can quite realise what it means to me to tell you this just now; but I owe it to you, I think. In later years you might find out, and then regret the days you spent under my roof. I called you childish a moment ago, you must forgive me; I know that you are a woman, and hope therefore that you will understand me. I killed your brother in fair fight. He provoked me as no man was ever provoked before ..."
"Is it necessary, M. Déroulède, that you should tell me all this?" she interrupted him with some impatience.
"I thought you ought to know."
"You must know, on the other hand, that I have no means of hearing the history of the quarrel from my brother's point of view now."
The moment the words were out of her lips she had realised how cruelly she had spoken. He did not reply; he was too chivalrous, too gentle, to reproach her. Perhaps he understood for the first time how bitterly she had felt her brother's death, and how deeply she must be suffering, now that she knew herself to be face to face with his murderer.