He had forgotten that he addressed himself to a stranger, so wholly had his passion carried him away. He awakened to her now, seeing her recoil from him as though repelled by his vehemence, and then conquer her impulse and turn to him again.
“Pardon!” He held up his hand to check her as she was about to speak. “I speak, in my forgetfulness, of things incomprehensible to you. I employ names that are unmeaning. These have no part in the message I entreat you of your goodness to bear to the Superintendent of this house. Could it not be made clear to this lady, without baring to the vision of a stranger the disgrace of one whom I am bound to respect, and would that it were possible! Could it not be understood that this money was gained in a discreditable, vile, and shameful way? Could it not be understood that I shall never rest until it has been returned to the original source whence it was unjustly plundered and wrung? Could it not be made clear that while I was yet a boy I swore a solemn oath before Almighty God, at the instance of a friend—who afterwards cast me off and deserted me!—that this restitution should be made?... Might it not be explained that I have had nothing, since I took that oath, that was not earned by my own efforts? That I could take no holidays from the Technical School where I was a cadet, because I could not afford to buy civilian clothes, and that, until by good fortune I earned rewards and prizes and a period of free tuition at the Training Institute for Officers of the Staff—that many of my comrades deserved better, I do not doubt!—I was very, very poor, Mademoiselle! Would it not be possible?”
“Yes, yes!”—she answered him, and her pale cheeks had grown rosy as apple-blossoms, and her great gray-blue eyes were full of kindness now. “It shall all be explained. You shall be no longer blamed where you are praiseworthy, and reproached where you should be honored. And—two breaches of faith—a double perjury—are worse than one, though a lower standard of honor than yours would have taken your false friend’s desertion as a release. You have done well to keep your oath, M. Dunoisse, though he may have broken his.”
“I deserve no praise,” said Dunoisse, “and I desire none. I ask for justice—it is the right of every human soul; I beg you to repeat to this benevolent lady what I have said, and to tell her that I will be answerable for whatever charges she has been put to, for the medical attendance and support of my dear old friend, from to-day. It is a sacred duty which I will gladly take upon myself.”
“Forgive me,” said the listener, and her voice was very soft, “but would not this be a heavy tax on your resources?—a heavy drain upon your slender means?”
He listened, with his black eyes seeming to study an engraving that hung upon the staircase wall. She ended, and he looked at her again.
“It would be a tax, and a drain under ordinary circumstances, but I think I can insure a way to meet the difficulty.... Is it possible that I may be permitted to say Adieu to my old friend before I leave this house? It will be necessary—now!—that I should return to France by the packet that sails to-night.”
He was more than ever like a slender ruddy flame as he glowed there against the dull background of marble-papered wall and foggy window-panes. His virile energy, the hard clear ring of his voice, the keen flash of his black eyes won her rare approval, no less than his reticence and his delicacy. Her own eyes were more than kind, though in the respect of his seeing Miss Smithwick again that day her decision was prohibitory. He bowed to the decision.
“Then you shall say Adieu and Au revoir to her for me,” he said, and held out his hand with a smiling look and a quick, impulsive gesture. “And for yourself, Mademoiselle, accept my thanks.”
He added, retaining the hand she had placed in his: