Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so great that the words came out of themselves:
"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"
Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to him:
"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"
Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have told me nothing I might ask, exclaimed:
"Why, Lucas!"
He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance that the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a dead-weight, and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the nearest chair.
A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris standing wet-handed by me.
"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you love so much this Lucas who struck you?"
"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the duke."