There were still five minutes or so before he went out to use them. He stood looking down at them a little. Then he went slowly to the fireplace and laid his head on his folded arms on the mantel. It was bitter to be driven to this, just when he was on the eve of making his work in Finistère a success. To-morrow, if he lived, he might hear that the money from Mirabel was truly his—for the Cause—but to-night he must expose himself to the chance of being killed by this man who had been trying for days to provoke him. Well, God knew he had done his utmost that he should not succeed—but there was a limit to what could be borne by flesh and blood. Would not even she have said so, for whose memory’s sake he had tried to do something worthy of a man? . . . But if he fell, what a way to fall—in a quarrel with his own chief of staff?
Then it came back upon him like a flood that his enemy had dared to use her sacred name as a cover for his own unspeakable insolence, and regret and reluctance were gone as though they had never been. He would kill de Brencourt for that! He went back to the table and took up his pistols.
It was time indeed, for as he pushed the first into his belt there came a tap at the door, and the Comte reappeared.
“Are you ready?” he asked in a low voice.
The Marquis, with a face like flint, nodded and took up the second pistol. But M. de Brencourt closed the door behind him.
“Before we go,” he said, “would it not be as well to settle the distance and the order of firing? We might do that as conveniently here as in the forest.”
“Certainly,” agreed his adversary. “The less time we spend there the better.”
“Ten paces, then?” suggested the other. “Moonlight is not daylight.” (But, even in the moonlight, it would surely be impossible to miss at ten paces.)
“Very well,” agreed M. de Kersaint indifferently. “Across a handkerchief, if you like—only there are no seconds to hold it for us.”
“No, and that is the other point,” said the Comte de Brencourt with some eagerness. “Since there is no one to count for us, or to make any signal, we cannot with the best will in the world be sure of firing at exactly the same moment. I suggest, therefore, that we draw lots to determine who is to fire first.”