"Then, there is the Vicomte d'Halluys; he, too, has offended me."
"The vicomte?" Challenge the vicomte, who had put D'Hérouville in the hospital that night of the fatal supper?
"Ah!" said madame; "you hesitate! And yet you ask me to put you to the test!"
"I was weighing the matter of preference," with a wave of the hand; "whether to challenge the vicomte first, or D'Hérouville. Give me the rest of the list."
"Monsieur, I admire the facility with which you adapt yourself to circumstances," scornfully. "You knew that I was but playing. I am fully capable of repaying any insolence offered to me, whether from D'Hérouville, the vicomte … or yourself."
"To love you, then, is insolence?"
"Yes; the method which you use is insolent."
"Is there any way to prove that I love you?" admirably hiding his despair.
"What! Monsieur, you go a-courting without buckles on your shoes?"
"Diane, let us play at cross-purposes no longer. You may laugh, thrust, scorn, trample, it will in no wise effect the constancy of my love. I do not ask you to set tasks for me. Now, hark to me: where you go henceforth, there shall I go also, to France, to Spain, to the ends of the world. You will never be so far away from the sound of my voice that you can not hear me say that I love you."