I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to; he went on:
"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever."
"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."
"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still maintain them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No, whatever Monsieur replies, I must go tell him I repent."
I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.
"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"
"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped hound."
"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the same thing."
"I have heard M. l'Abbé read the story of the prodigal son," I said. "And he was a vaurien, if you like—no more monsieur's sort than Lucas himself. But it says that when his father saw him coming a long way off, he ran out to meet him and fell on his neck."
M. Étienne looked not altogether convinced.