“Yes—I first—wretch!—So it must be,” said Leon.
Meanwhile Don Pedro and a maid had lifted Pepa and carried her to a sofa.
“You first,” Federico insisted, his cynicism yielding for a moment to an impulse of real dignity. “If not, I....”
“Nay; I will go first,” said Leon bitterly. “It is but right.”
He went up to the senseless form lying pale and dumb on the sofa, and gazed at her for a moment; he looked up at Cimarra, and bending over Pepa, kissed her cheek with tender passion. Then, fixing his eyes on her husband, he said:
“Bully! Thus I take leave of the woman you claim as your wife. If it is a crime, kill me; you have a right to do so.—Have you a weapon?”
“Yes,” said Federico sullenly, and putting his hand into his breast-pocket. It seemed as though a spark of honour, vigour and dignity had suddenly flashed into being in this abject creature—a corpse returned from the grave—as the will-o’-the-wisp suddenly flickers up from a foul morass. He stood face to face with his foe, a pistol in his hand, with a dull roar in his voice, and a sinister light in his eye. Leon waited calmly. But Don Pedro and his friend seized Federico and held his arms. After a violent struggle, they succeeded in pulling him back; Leon remained standing with his arms folded, in the middle of the room.
“Leave the house!” cried Don Justo to his nephew.
“I will answer for the other,” said Don Pedro.
Don Justo dragged Federico away, not allowing him to pause an instant till he was fairly out of the house.