"I quite expected that excuse. It's easy to say that. We don't know when peace will be signed. We may both of us be old men by then. Hang it all, the armistice is good enough for me, and I am so constituted that the thought of holding over indefinitely the remembrance of so unpardonable an affront, makes me furious. I want to kill you at once, Captain d'Haumont."
"I say again that for the time being my life belongs to my country."
"Mlle. de la Boulays told us that you had shed half your blood for your country. I claim the other half. When a man knows that he cannot fight, or chooses not to fight, he behaves himself accordingly, and keeps to himself the ill opinion that he may have formed of his neighbor."
Captain d'Haumont did not answer the Count. He pointed to the door.
Then Count de Gorbio, with a slow movement, drew off a heavy motor-glove and struck him with it across the face.
The scene changed in a flash. Didier took the Count in his formidable hands, lifted him, swung him, and was about to break his head against the wall when the Count, in his terror, bellowed the one thing that could save him.
"Coward, afraid of my pistol."
Didier let him drop.
"Very well," he said, "I'll fight you."
During this time Mlle. de la Boulays was searching the Château for de Gorbio, and was in a fever of anxiety as to what had become of him.