dismay. Her words were so many arrows,
the points of which remained sticking in him.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your not believing it doesn't affect the
truth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the place when it
happened. And you may despise rumour as you will, my experience is, a
report never springs up that hasn't some basis of fact to go
on--however small."

He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that came to his
lips; of what use was it to make himself still more ridiculous in her
eyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he picked it up, and brushed it
on his sleeve, without knowing what he did. "Oh, well, of course, if
you think that," he said as coolly as he was able, "nothing I could say
would make any difference. Every one is free to his opinions, I
suppose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine"--he grew hot in
spite of himself. "You have been her friend, you say; you have known
her intimately; and yet just because she ... she cares for this fellow
in such a way that she sets caring for him above being cautious--why,
not one woman in a thousand would have the courage for that sort of
thing! It needs courage, not to mind what people--no, what your friends
imagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do. Besides, one has
only to look at her to see how absurd it is. That face and--I don't
know her, Madeleine; I've never spoken to her, and never may, yet I am
absolutely certain that what is said about her isn't true. So certain
that--But after all, if this is what you think about ... about it, then
all I have to say is, we had better not discuss the subject again. It
does no good, and we should never be of the same opinion."

Not without embarrassment, now that he had said his say, he turned to
the door. But Madeleine was not in the least angry. She gave him her
hand, and said, with a smile, yet gravely, too: "Agreed, Maurice! We
will not speak of Louise again."

V.

He shunned Madeleine for days after this. He was morose and unhappy,
and brooded darkly over the baseness of wagging tongues. For the first
time in his life he had come into touch with slander, that invisible
Hydra, and straightway it seized upon the one person to whom he was not
indifferent. In this mood it was a relief to him that certain three
windows in the BRUDERSTRASSE remained closed and shuttered; with the
load of malicious gossip fresh on his mind, he chose rather not to see
her; he must first accustom