rters
with a manner at once deprecating and defiant. He sat in my arm-chair
and laughed quietly before he spoke."

"'I am looking for friends,' he said; 'for a pair of friends.'"

"Then, of course, I understood. I bade him count on me. 'And there is
also de Sailles,' I reminded him. 'He has a very just taste in these
affairs. But who is our opponent?'"

"'It is Bertin,' he answered."

"I was astonished, and he told me all. It was an episode of quixotry,
a thing entirely imprudent and altogether lovable in him. It chanced
that on the evening of Bertin's little--er--fracas, Vaucher had
passed by the impasse in which Bertin lived. He had heard the scream
of the man with the knife in him and paused. It was a dark night, and
in the impasse there was but one lamp which stood near Bertin's door.
There was a babble of many voices after that scream--shouts of fury,
the whining of the would-be assassin, and so on; he was about to pass
on, when Bertin's door opened and a woman slipped out and stood
listening on the pavement. Her attitude was that of one ready to
flee, terrified but uncertain. As the noises within died down she
relapsed from her tense pose and showed her face to Vaucher in the
light of the lamp. It was Madame Bertin. She did not see him where he
waited, and all of a sudden her self-possession snapped like a twig
you break in your fingers. She was weeping, leaning against the wall,
weeping desolately, in an abandonment of humiliation and impotence.
But Vaucher was not moved when he told me of it."

"'That I could have endured,' he said. 'I held my peace and did not
intrude upon her. But presently they brought the wounded man
downstairs, and Bertin came forth to seek a fiacre to take him away.
She heard him ere he came out and gained thus the grace of an
instant. There was never anything in life so pitiful, so moving, as
the woman's strength that strangled down her sobs, dried the tears at
their source, and showed to her husband a face as calm as it was
cold. He spoke to her and she gave him a word in answer. But'--and he
leaned forward in my chair and struck his fist on the arm of it--'but
that poor victory is sore in my memory like a scar."

"All that was comprehensible. Vaucher was a man of heart. 'But what
is the quarrel?' I demanded."

"'The quarrel!' he repeated. 'Let me see; what was it, now?' He had
actually forgotten. 'Oh yes. He spoke to me. That was it. He spoke to
me, and I desired him not to spe