Professor Keredec turned toward me with a half-desperate, half-apologetic laugh which was like the rumbling of heavy wagons over a block pavement; and in his flustered face I thought I read a signal of genuine distress.
“I do not know the lady,” I said with some sharpness. “I have never seen her until this afternoon.”
Upon this “that other monsieur” astonished me in good earnest. Searching my eyes eagerly with his clear, inquisitive gaze, he took a step toward me and said:
“You are sure you are telling the truth?”
The professor uttered an exclamation of horror, sprang forward, and clutched his friend’s arm again. “Malheureux!” he cried, and then to me: “Sir, you will give him pardon if you can? He has no meaning to be rude.”
“Rude?” The young man’s voice showed both astonishment and pain. “Was that rude? I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to be rude, God knows! Ah,” he said sadly, “I do nothing but make mistakes. I hope you will forgive me.”
He lifted his hand as if in appeal, and let it drop to his side; and in the action, as well as in the tone of his voice and his attitude of contrition, there was something that reached me suddenly, with the touch of pathos.
“Never mind,” I said. “I am only sorry that it was the truth.”
“Thank you,” he said, and turned humbly to Keredec.
“Ha, that is better!” shouted the great man, apparently relieved of a vast weight. “We shall go home now and eat a good dinner. But first—” his silver-rimmed spectacles twinkled upon me, and he bent his Brobdingnagian back in a bow which against my will reminded me of the curtseys performed by Orloff’s dancing bears—“first let me speak some words for myself. My dear sir”—he addressed himself to me with grave formality—“do not suppose I have no realization that other excuses should be made to you. Believe me, they shall be. It is now that I see it is fortunate for us that you are our fellow-innsman at Les Trois Pigeons.”