He motioned Sabran towards one of the empty chambers in the gallery. When he had closed the door of it he spoke with a low, hoarse voice:
'Sir, I have the right as her kinsman, I have the right her brothers would have had, to publicly insult you, to publicly chastise you. But she has commanded me to abstain; she will have no feud between us. I obey her; so must you. I have but one thing to say to you. Once you spoke of suicide. I forbid you to follow up your crimes by causing the unending misery that death by your own hand would bring to her. You have been coward enough. Have courage at least not to leave a woman alone under the disgrace you have brought upon her.'
'Alone!' echoed Sabran. 'She will never admit me to her presence again. She will demand her divorce as soon as ever she has strength to remember and to speak.'
'Do you know her so ill after nine years of marriage? Whatever she do it will be for you to accept it, and not evade your chastisement by the poltroon's refuge of oblivion in the grave. You have said you think yourself my debtor; all the quittance I desire is this. You will obey me when I forbid you to entail on your wife the lifelong remorse that your suicide—however you disguised it—would bring upon her. In obeying her, by holding back my hand from avenging her, I make the greatest sacrifice that she could have demanded. Make yours likewise. It would be easy for you to escape chastisement in death. You must forego that ease, and live. I leave you to your conscience and to her.'
He opened the door and passed down the corridor, his steps echoing on the oaken floor.
In half an hour he had left the house, and gone on his lonely way to Taróc.
Sabran stood mute.
He had lost the power to resent; he knew that if this man chose to strike him across the eyes with his whip he would be within his right. The insults cut him to the bone as though the lash were on him; but he held his peace and bore them, not in submission, but in silence. His profound humiliation, his absolute despair, had broken the nerve in him. He felt that he had no title to look a gentleman in the face, no power to defend himself, whatever outrages were heaped on him.