I lost my self-control. I rose and put both my hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes.
“You can kick anybody you please whom you hear breathe a word against the honour and purity of Madame Lola Brandt.”
Then I walked away, knowing I had betrayed myself, and tried to light a cigar with fingers that shook. There was a pause. Dale stood with his back to the fireplace, one foot on the fender. The cigar took some lighting. The pause grew irksome.
“My regard for Madame Brandt,” said I at last, “is such that I don't wish to discuss her with any one.” I looked at Dale and met his keen eyes fixed on me. The faintest shadow of a smile played about his mouth.
“Very well,” said he dryly, “we won't discuss her. But all the same, my dear Simon, I can't help being interested in her; and as you're obviously the same, it seems rather curious that you don't know where she is.”
“Do you doubt me?” I asked, somewhat staggered by his tone.
“Good Heaven's, no! But if she has disappeared, I'm convinced that something has happened which I know nothing of. Of course, it's none of my business.”
There was a new and startling note of assurance in his voice. Certainly he had developed during the past few months. What I had done, Heaven only knows. Misfortune, which is supposed to be formative of character, seemed to have turned mine into pie. How can I otherwise account for my not checking the lunatic impulse that prompted my next words.
“Well, something has happened,” said I, “and if we're to be friends, you had better know it. Two days ago, for the first time, I told Madame Brandt that I loved her. This very afternoon I went to get her answer to my question—would she marry me?—and I found that she had disappeared without leaving any address behind her. So whenever you hear her name mentioned you can just tell everybody that she's the one woman in the whole wide world I want to marry.”
“Poor old Simon,” said Dale. “Poor old chap.”