"No," said Mademoiselle, "it has not been uninteresting."
"You are pale, my son," said my father, turning to me. "I trust you are not hurt?"
I shook my head.
"It is only your pride? You will be better soon. Come, we have always been good losers. We have always known when the game was up. Let us see if we cannot end it gracefully, as gentlemen should. You cannot get the paper. Why not make the best of it? You have tried, and tried not unskilfully, but you see now that the right man cannot always win—a useful lesson, is it not? I do not ask you to like me for it. You have seen enough of me, I hope, to hate me. And yet—let us be philosophical. Be seated, my son. Brutus, it is three o'clock. Bring in the Madeira, and the noon meal."
I did not reply, and he stood for a moment watching me narrowly. Brutus threw another log on the fire, which gave off a brisk crackling from the bed of coals. He then stood waiting doubtfully, until my father nodded.
"Take the door out as you go," my father directed. "Mademoiselle, permit me."
He pointed out an armchair beside the fire. "And you, my son, opposite. So." From the side pocket of his coat he drew a silver mounted pistol, which he examined with studious attention.
"Come," he said, slipping it back, "let us be tranquil. Is there any reason to bear ill will simply because we each stand on an opposite side of a question of ethics? If you had only been to the wars, how differently you would see it. There hundreds of men stab each other with the best will in the world, none of the crudeness of personal animosity, only the best of good nature. In a little time now we shall part, never, if I can help it, to meet again. You have seen me as a dangerous, reckless man, without any principles worth mentioning. Indeed, I have so few that I shall have recourse to violence, my son, if you do not assume a more reposeful manner. The evening will be active enough to make any further excitement quite superfluous. Have patience. An hour or so means little to anyone so young."
There fell a silence while he stood immovably watching us. A gust of wind blew down the chimney, and scattered a cloud of dust over the hearth. The rafters creaked. Somewhere in the stillness a door slammed. The very lack of expression in his face was stamping it on my memory, and for the first time its phlegmatic calm aroused in me a new emotion. I had hated it and wondered at it before, and now in spite of myself it was giving me a twinge of pity. For nature had intended it to be an expressive face, sensitive and quick to mirror each perception and emotion. Was it pride that had turned it into a mask, and drawn a curtain before the light that burned within, or had the light burned out and left it merely cold and unresponsive?
"The captain is thinking?" said Mademoiselle.