‘No!’ I replied. ‘For if you were to say that you had struck Gil de Berault and left the ground with a whole skin, no one would believe you.’
‘Gil de Berault!’ he exclaimed frowning.
‘Yes, Monsieur,’ I replied suavely. ‘At your service. You did not know my name?’
‘I thought that your name was De Barthe,’ he said. His voice sounded queerly; and he waited for the answer with parted lips, and a shadow in his eyes which I had seen in men’s eyes before.
‘No,’ I said; ‘that was my mother’s name. I took it for this occasion only.’
His florid cheek lost a shade of its colour, and he bit his lips as he glanced at the Lieutenant, trouble in his eyes. I had seen these signs before, and knew them, and I might have cried ‘Chicken-heart!’ in my turn; but I had not made a way of escape for him—before I declared myself—for nothing, and I held to my purpose.
‘I think you will allow now,’ I said grimly, ‘that it will not harm me even if I put up with a blow!’
‘M. de Berault’s courage is known,’ he muttered.
‘And with reason,’ I said. ‘That being so suppose that we say this day three months, M. le Capitaine? The postponement to be for my convenience.’
He caught the Lieutenant’s eye and looked down sullenly, the conflict in his mind as plain as daylight. He had only to insist that I must fight; and if by luck or skill he could master me his fame as a duellist would run, like a ripple over water, through every garrison town in France and make him a name even in Paris. On the other side were the imminent peril of death, the gleam of cold steel already in fancy at his breast, the loss of life and sunshine, and the possibility of a retreat with honour, if without glory. I read his face, and knew before he spoke what he would do.