Pierre laughed the louder.
“Ah! ha! very good. I understand now why I should no longer speak of her as ‘the widow.’ But you have taken a strange way of announcing your engagement.”
“I forbid any jesting about it. Do you hear? I forbid it.”
Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with exasperation at this irony levelled at the woman he loved and had chosen.
But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain, bewildering it like a fit.
“How dare you? How dare you? I order you to hold your tongue—do you hear? I order you.”
Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly:
“I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since the day when you first began to talk of ‘the widow’ because you knew it annoyed me.”
Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were common with him.
“Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you! I? I? And of what? Good God! Of your person or your mind?”