“An unexpected return invariably leads to unpleasant explanations. But in the present case I design to make you none, further than that I came here by appointment.” His smile was intolerable as he added: “Not for the first time. And I will meet you when you please, and where you please. You have your choice of weapons, understand me—from ordinary dueling-pistols to a buttonless foil!”
Dunoisse, lividly pale and sharp-faced, looked at his enemy, showing his small square teeth almost smilingly, breathing through his nose rather loudly, just as Redskin had done upon the day of the boyish quarrel at the School. Even as then, he was conscious of being a little sick at the pit of his stomach: the sight of de Moulny, big and blond and brutal, his light-brown, curled hair and reddish whiskers glittering with fog-beads, his hard eyes bloodshot with the night’s excess, his immaculately-cut black frock-coat buttoned awry, its collar turned up to shield the bareness of his thick white bull-neck from the chill night air, its lapels dragged over the breast to conceal the absence of a cravat, his usually irreproachable trousers and polished boots dabbled with the mud of the streets, affected Dunoisse with a physical nausea as well as a malady of the soul.... To the picture of the libertine confronted by the grim mower in the midst of his garden of stolen pleasures, was added a touch of absurdity in the little white-papered, red-sealed chemist’s parcel, held with a certain air of fastidious helplessness between a finger and thumb of one of the large, white, carefully-tended hands. And as though Dunoisse’s glance at this had reminded de Moulny of its destined use, he said, holding his head high, speaking through his nose, deliberately:
“Monsieur, since we have arrived at a complete understanding, it appears to me that delicacy and good taste should counsel you to retire, and leave me to minister to the very evident need of our lovely friend.” Meeting no response from Dunoisse, he added, with his insufferable smile, glancing towards the still sleeper on the rose-hued sofa:
“She swooned in my arms.... These delicate sensualists live hard—to put it brutally. ‘One must pay the piper,’ as the English say,—in the end,—for being perpetually attuned to concert-pitch.... And the servants had all been sent out of the way!... Imagine my predicament!... A senseless woman on my hands, and not another woman within cry.... Thus it was, that in my present, slightly compromising state of déshabille, I sallied out to fetch a surgeon—an excellent, discreet, and reliable person, who—as luck would have it—has gone into the country to operate upon a patient, and until to-morrow is not expected to return.... Failing him, I knocked up a chemist, who supplied me with these drops—warranted infallible”—he held up the little parcel—“adding some advice gratis as to treatment of the sufferer, involving—unless I err—friction over the region of that conjectural feminine organ, the heart....”
De Moulny, seeming bigger and more blond and brutal than ever, moved with his long, padding elastic step,—recalling the gait of a puma—to the sofa. Dunoisse, even quicker than he, interposed, and said, baldly and simply, speaking between his close-shut teeth, and looking straight in the other’s stony eyes:
“If you touch her I shall kill you! Take care!...”
“Oh, as to killing!” de Moulny said with a shrug.... But he did not carry out the intention expressed in that long, catlike stride. He moved to the hearth, where the wood-fire was glowing with a comfortable warmth that tempted him, and said, daintily picking up his splashed coat-tails, as he lolled with his heavy shoulders against the mantelshelf:
“Permit me to point out that your utterance savors of the dog in the manger. You have failed to revive Madame—and I am not to try. You would rather Death laid his bony hand upon that eminently lovely person than that I did.... Well!... Be it so!”
He shrugged with an elaborate affectation of indifference—even feigned to yawn. Dunoisse answered hoarsely, turning away his sickened eyes from him:
“Death has already touched and claimed her. She is Death’s—not mine or yours!”