The porcelain clock upon the mantelshelf struck one and the half-hour, as Dunoisse sat thrashing the question out—to go or stay with her? And presently he raised his wrung and ravaged face, and got up and stood beside the sofa, looking down at Henriette....
“Poor soul!” he said. “You knew me better than I knew myself. I am a purblind idiot, Henriette, who, having profited by your unfaith—looked to you to be faithful. Now I am paid in my own coin—it is my pride that suffers—not my love. For as you say, and rightly!—I have never loved you. Yet, love or none, because that other man has fled and left you, and because that viler self that lurks within counsels me to follow—I stay beside you here.”
LXVI
When the porcelain clock upon the mantelshelf had chimed the hour, a cautious footstep had crossed the flagged pavement of the foggy courtyard. Dunoisse had not heard it—he had been listening to that speechless voice. But now that the stealthy footsteps traversed the parquet of the vestibule—stumbled over an unseen ottoman in the darkness of the large drawing-room—threaded the next, and crossed the threshold of the green-and-gold boudoir, he heard it, with a creeping icy chill, and a rising of the hairs upon his scalp and body. He remembered that he had not shut the courtyard gate, or the hall-door behind him, upon this fatal night of revelation.... It occurred to him that some prowling night-hawk of the Paris streets might have entered in search of food and plunder, or that the intruder might prove to be a sergent de ville, or the watchman of the quarter, or even a gendarme of the city patrol.... But when a large, powerful, well-kept white hand, with fleshy, round-topped fingers, came stealing about the edge of the partly-open door, and pushed it cautiously inwards—Dunoisse, with a savage leaping of the blood, knew—even before a tall, bulky figure loomed dark upon the threshold, seen against the brilliance and glitter of the boudoir—that the man who had left her had returned.
That the man was de Moulny he had never for one instant doubted. Now the muscles of his folded arms tightened across his breast like cords of steel, his keen face was set like granite, and a cold, fierce light of battle blazed in his keen black eyes. It was good to Dunoisse that this hour should have come, setting Redskin face to face with his old, treacherous enemy, stripping all pretenses from their mutual hate. The loaded pistol in the inner pocket of his coat gave him the advantage—supposing de Moulny unarmed.... But he knew how to equalize the chances.... They would toss for the shot, or throw away the Colt’s revolver. Men can kill men with no other weapons than their muscular naked hands.
In the first moment of his entrance, de Moulny—newly out of fog and darkness—blinking from the radiance of the boudoir, did not observe that the bedroom held any occupant besides the rigid, white form upon the rose-colored sofa. His light blue, strained and slightly bloodshot eyes went to that directly. His jutting underlip shook, a question was written large upon the pale, heavily-featured countenance. “Has she moved or breathed since I left her?” it seemed to ask, and the negative of her immobility wiped a latent expectation out from it. And then——
Then a purposely-made movement of Dunoisse jerked de Moulny’s head round. A sudden reddish flame leaped into the pale eyes as they took in the slender, upright figure in the rough gray traveling surtout, standing at the foot of the couch with folded arms.... And though de Moulny did not palpably start, yet his big jowl dropped a hair’s-breadth. A slight hissing intake of the breath betrayed his perturbation and surprise.
“Th’h’h!”.... And then in an instant the old de Moulny was back, arrogant, cool, self-possessed as ever. His blue eyes were hard as polished stones as they met the black eyes of Dunoisse. He said, pouting his fleshy lips, sticking his long obstinate chin out, looking arrogantly down his big thick nose in the old familiar manner: