‘Wait! Wait a moment! Come back!’ she panted. I turned. The smile and flush had vanished; her face was pale. ‘No!’ she said abruptly. ‘I was wrong! I, will not have it. I will have no part in it! You planned it last night, M. de Barthe. It is murder.’
‘Mademoiselle!’ I exclaimed, wondering. ‘Murder? Why? It is a duel.’
‘It is murder,’ she answered persistently. ‘You planned it last night. You said so.’
‘But I risk my own life,’ I replied sharply.
‘Nevertheless—I will have no part in it,’ she answered more faintly. She was trembling with agitation. Her eyes avoided mine.
‘On my shoulders be it then!’ I replied stoutly. ‘It is too late, Mademoiselle, to go back. They are waiting for me. Only, before I go, let me beg of you to retire.’
And I turned from her, and went out, wondering and thinking. First, that women were strange things. Secondly—MURDER? Merely because I had planned the duel and provoked the quarrel! Never had I heard anything so preposterous. Grant it, and dub every man who kept his honour with his hands a Cain—and a good many branded faces would be seen in some streets. I laughed at the fancy, as I strode down the garden walk.
And yet, perhaps, I was going to do a foolish thing. The Lieutenant would still be here: a hard-bitten man, of stiffer stuff than his Captain. And the troopers. What if, when I had killed their leader, they made the place too hot for me, Monseigneur’s commission notwithstanding? I should look silly, indeed, if on the eve of success I were driven from the place by a parcel of jack-boots.
I liked the thought so little that I hesitated. Yet it seemed too late to retreat. The Captain and the Lieutenant were waiting for me in a little open space fifty yards from the house, where a narrower path crossed the broad walk, down which I had first seen Mademoiselle and her sister pacing. The Captain had removed his doublet, and stood in his shirt leaning against the sundial, his head bare and his sinewy throat uncovered. He had drawn his rapier and stood pricking the ground impatiently. I marked his strong and nervous frame and his sanguine air: and twenty years earlier the sight might have damped me. But no thought of the kind entered my head now, and though I felt with each moment greater reluctance to engage, doubt of the issue had no place in my calculations.
I made ready slowly, and would gladly, to gain time, have found some fault with the place. But the sun was sufficiently high to give no advantage to either. The ground was good, the spot well chosen. I could find no excuse to put off the man, and I was about to salute him and fall to work when a thought crossed my mind.