But here--here was no voluntary act on my part, no privacy,
nothing but shame. And I stood mute, convicted, speechless,
under her eyes--like the thing I was.
Yet if anything could have braced me it was Mademoiselle's voice
when she answered him.
'Go on, Monsieur,' she said calmly, 'you will have done the
sooner.'
'You do not believe me?' he replied. 'Then, I say, look at him!
Look at him! If ever shame--'
'Monsieur,' she said abruptly--she did not look at me, 'I am
ashamed of myself.'
'But you don't hear me,' the Lieutenant rejoined hotly. 'His
very name is not his own! He is not Barthe at all. He is
Berault, the gambler, the duellist, the bully; whom if you--'
Again she interrupted him.
'I know it,' she said coldly. 'I know it all; and if you have
nothing more to tell me, go, Monsieur. Go!' she continued in a
tone of infinite scorn. 'Be satisfied, that you have earned my
contempt as well as my abhorrence.'
He looked for a moment taken aback. Then,--
'Ay, but I have more,' he cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant.
'I forgot that you would think little of that.
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