There was a light in her half-closed eyes. "You are sorry, then, for what has happened?" she asked, raising herself erect again.
"My God! am I such a monster," he replied, scarcely audibly, "that I should take a special pleasure in the thought that I have slain a man for no other crime than defending the honour of his name?"
"Then you are ready to repent?" she asked, bending towards him with a sort of impetuous greed.
A shudder ran through his frame. "Repent nothing," came the old cry within him. Now that he knew what she was demanding of him, his manliness returned.
"What do you call repenting?" he asked, and thrust his hand in his pockets. "Shall I whimper and whine and tear my hair? Shall I crawl on my knees like a scurvy hound? No, dear Hannah. I must stick to my defiance, to my merry heart and thick skin, if I am to set things right. And now, out with it. What have I got exactly to repent? What more did I do than is done every day in the world out there? I am not a paragon. I could only act as I have seen others act."
"Then, from the point of view of comfort, your outlook on life leaves nothing to wish for?"
"Why should I rush headlong into discomfort?" he retorted, more intrepid than he really felt. "But to continue; you know my cousinship with her. I trust that you will not fling that up at me; and with regard to Rhaden, I was never on intimate terms with him. I knew him as a grumbling, cross-grained fellow, nothing more. So there can be no question of a breach of friendship. Later, when the affair got wind, and a challenge to fight was given me in the garden, everything was done correctly. He it was who desired that the seconds should not be initiated into the cause of the quarrel. His wife's reputation must be saved at any cost I simply had to say 'Yes.' And this is how it is Ulrich rushed into matrimony in ignorance of what had really happened, and now I see the folly of it, and that is the mistake I so bitterly rue. Well, to proceed. The quarrel at cards had to be arranged as a blind, and just as little as he was to be blamed for not firing in the air, can I be blamed for shooting him down. For, you see, I was obliged to defend myself. I will admit that it all sounds very barbaric in black and white, but it is not my vocation to revolutionise morals--I leave that to the social democrats. I accepted my sentence and punishment, and with my period of exile in America I have done with the whole thing. So bastâ!"
He raised his fists as if relieved of some heavy weight. With this drastic explanation he hoped to break once for all the chain with which his sister had tried to bring his will into subjection to her own. But he could not evade that searching, hungry glance. He had learned to fear her, and felt that she meant him harm.
"If you will deliberately revel in evil thus," she said, "I must give you up as lost. But are you become so uncivilised and lawless that even the disgrace which your friend has suffered through you does not weigh on your conscience?"
"Be silent!" he shouted, jumping up. "You don't wish to be reproached on that score, neither will I be reproached. The misfortune has happened--any step that I might take now would only increase it. I have given up intercourse with him. Do you think that was easy? Do you think I can ever be quit of the fear of what may befall him?"