Mortémar tried again to protest.
"Silence!" said Gaston savagely, "do you not see that I must kill him?"
"'Tis obvious as the crescent moon yonder, M. de Mortémar," said Eglinton with a whimsical smile. "I entreat you, the pistols."
The young man obeyed in silence. He strode across the room to the place lately vacated by Gaston, and near which his cloak was lying close to his hat and whip. Mortémar groped in the pockets: he found the two pistols and then rejoined the antagonists.
"I used one against a couple of footpads in the early dawn," said Gaston, as he took the weapons from Mortémar's hands and placed them on the table.
"'Twas lucky, Monsieur le Comte," rejoined Eglinton gravely, "then all we need do is to throw for the choice."
"Dice," said Stainville curtly.
On a table close by there was a dice-box, left there by one of Jean Marie's customers: Mortémar, without a word, handed it to Eglinton. He could not understand the placidity of the man: Gaston's attitude was simple enough, primitive animal rage, blinding him to the possibility of immediate death; excitement too, giving him a sense of bravado, an arrogant disregard of the consequences of his own provocation.
Eglinton was within his rights. He was now the insulted party, he could make his own conditions, but did he wish to die? or was he so supremely indifferent to life that he could view with perfect serenity that pair of pistols, one of which death-dealing of a surety across a narrow table, and that box of dice the arbiter of his fate?
Of a truth Eglinton was perfectly indifferent as to the issue of the combat. He did not care if he killed Gaston, nor did he care to live. Lydie hated him, so what mattered if the sky was blue, or if the sun ceased to shed radiance over the earth?