It seemed to Thor that there was an opening here for a timorous attempt to cry quits. "If it comes to the question of suffering, Claude, it isn't all on one side. You may be scratched and bleeding, as you say, and yet you can get over it; whereas I'm lamed for life."
"Ah, don't come the hypocrite! If you're lamed for life, as I hope to God you are, it's because you've got a bullet in the leg—which is what any one hands out to a poacher."
The relatively gentle tone was again the effect of a surprise stimulated to curiosity. "When was I ever a poacher?"
"You were a poacher when you went making love to a woman who belonged to another man, while you belonged to another woman."
"Very well," Thor said, quietly, after a minute's thinking. "I accept the explanation. But I never did it."
"Then you did something so infernally like it that to deny it is mere quibbling with words."
"All the same, I insist on making the denial."
Claude shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not surprised at that. It's exactly what your type of cur would do. Unfortunately for you, I've the proof."
"The proof of what?"
"Of your torturing a poor girl into saying she was willing to marry you—and then throwing the words in her teeth."