She bit her scarlet underlip and answered, breathing quickly:
"He was too good, too high-minded—too chivalrous—oh! 'tis ridiculous, I admit!" for Straz commenced to titter silently, screwing up the corners of his eyes and shaking his shoulders, as he sat with his thick, short arms folded on his chest. "An idea to make you hug yourself as you are doing. But true, nevertheless! He would have said—at this distance of time I can still hear him preaching: 'I will avenge the injury to my honor when I am confronted with my enemy. I will not revenge myself upon the woman who deserted me for him!'"
The words came, not in her own voice. Straz left off sniggering. He said to himself, considering her through narrowed lids:
"Those were De Bayard's actual words. I wonder, since she has neither seen nor heard from him since she left him, how it is she knew that they were spoken? Some obliging mutual friend may have repeated them. Or she read them in some letter of his, written to Count Valverden. That is quite possible. But the question is, whether she would detest him so bitterly if her passion for him were absolutely extinguished. She is even jealous when one speaks of their daughter, whom he worships.... I will play her on this string—it may be useful, who knows?"
Aloud he said:
"Detest your husband, dear friend, if it affords you entertainment. Probably he deserves it, though women I have met who knew him vowed him un crème d'homme, worthy of the name he bears." He smiled in his beard, hearing her foot tap upon the shining parquet, and went on. "Men have praised his gallantry and his disinterestedness——"
"'Disinterestedness!'" she mocked. "Truly—to the point of fanaticism he is disinterested. Have we not to thank that characteristic for the ruin of our plans?"
Said Straz:
"A little more subtlety upon the part of your solicitors, and you might have found M. le Colonel less obstinately inclined to discourage the idea of a reconciliation. To have entrusted a portrait to the hands of the lawyers would have been an excellent move. Once convinced that the thirteen or fourteen years that have elapsed since you—parted—have increased rather than diminished the beauty that once he worshiped—and I fancy De Bayard would have accepted your terms!"
He sniggered, and waited as the violet shadows about her brilliant eyes deepened, and she breathed more quickly. Then he went on: