"I cannot do anything else," said de Fresne, looking at the hut wall beyond him.
"You are resigning because I will not!"
"If you like to put it that way."
"Then you . . . you do think that ugly thing of me, de Fresne! Don't you know me—don't you know my family history? You, who have fought with me, and know what memories I carry, you think I could betray my dead!"
"I cannot reconcile it with my sense of honour," replied de Fresne, standing up very stiff—the stiffer, no doubt, that he was moved by the agony in the appeal, "that you refuse to take the obvious method of clearing your name. I do not say that I think you a traitor, for, as you say, I know you. . . . But, painful as it is, I must ask you to excuse me from serving under you any longer."
Save for the sweep of a pine-branch over the roof the silence was then absolute. In that silence Aymar put his left hand on his sword; and very slowly his head went down on his breast.
When he lifted it his mouth was set, his eyes very bright. "I hope my sense of honour is not less keen than yours, Monsieur de Fresne," he said quietly. "I must beg to refuse your sword. . . . I will ask you, instead, to accept mine." And, unfastening it, sheath and all, he laid it on the table with the hilt towards his second-in-command.
(8)
". . . Does not that satisfy you?" asked Aymar after a moment. "I cannot do more."
De Fresne woke from what seemed a stupor. "You have done too much. Take it back—I never meant that! I have no right to demand your sword. Take it and put it into the General's hands."