“Let us drink,” said Pierre, as he came to his feet quickly: “then for the House of Lords” (the new and fashionable tavern).
They separated in the street, and Pierre went to the House of Lords alone. He found a number of men gathered before a paper pasted on a pillar of the veranda. Hearing his own name, he came nearer. A ranch man was reading aloud an article from a newspaper printed two hundred miles away. The article was headed, “A Villainous Plunderer.” It had been written by someone at Guidon Hill. All that was discreditable in Pierre’s life it set forth with rude clearness; he was credited with nothing pardonable. In the crowd there were mutterings unmistakable to Pierre. He suddenly came among them, caught a revolver from his pocket, and shot over the reader’s shoulder six times into the pasted strip of newspaper.
The men dropped back. They were not prepared for warlike measures at the moment. Pierre leaned his back against the pillar and waited. His silence and coolness, together with an iron fierceness in his face, held them from instant demonstration against him; but he knew that he must face active peril soon. He pocketed his revolver and went up the hill to the house of Kitty Cline’s mother. It was the first time he had ever been there. At the door he hesitated, but knocked presently, and was admitted by Kitty, who, at sight of him, turned faint with sudden joy, and grasped the lintel to steady herself.
Pierre quietly caught her about the waist, and shut the door. She recovered, and gently disengaged herself. He made no further advance, and they stood looking at each other for a minute: he, as one who had come to look at something good he was never to see again; she, as at something she hoped to see for ever. They had never before been where no eyes could observe them. He ruled his voice to calmness.
“I am going away,” he said, “and I have come to say good-bye.”
Her eyes never wavered from his. Her voice was scarce above a whisper.
“Why do you go? Where are you going?”
“I have been here too long. I am what they call a villain and a plunderer. I am going to-mon Dieu, I do not know!” He shrugged his shoulders, and smiled with a sort of helpless disdain.
She leaned her hands on the table before her. Her voice was still that low, clear murmur.
“What people say doesn’t matter.” She staked her all upon her words. She must speak them, though she might hate herself afterwards. “Are you going—alone?”