Laurent, inspired to rather a bold course, broke in: "If you will forgive me for saying so, was not our having met before just why you disliked my being here? Could you not either forget that fact, or—what I should prefer—try to realize that to me you are, and always will be, exactly what you were in England, or in Paris last year?"
"Oh, my God!" said Aymar to himself, and tried to take his hand away.
But Laurent would not let it go. He knelt down by the bed. "Yes, I know that you feel there is a difference. But I knew—I knew about the slur on you before I entered the room. Nothing that these people say has any effect on me—if you would only believe that! Does not that make it possible for you to take . . . anything I may have the good fortune to do for you, as you would from any other . . . friend?"
He brought out the word rather low, for he felt that it was a little presumptuous, after all.
"Friend!" Aymar caught him up unsteadily. "No, you must not call yourself my friend, de Courtomer! You will not find me desirable, even as an acquaintance, now. Do you forget that I have lost my good name . . . and not only with the enemy?"
"I do not forget it," replied Laurent gravely. "But I know that you can recover it when you wish."
A bitter astonishment dawned in the face on the pillow.
"After what happened to me in the Bois des Fauvettes? No; my reputation is as much damaged by those bullets as my body."
He made himself say it, evidently, but he said it.
"But you cannot deny," urged Laurent, "that that horrible business was a misapprehension. You must pardon my conjecture, but I fancy I know of what kind it was."