your conduct."

"I'll give you none!" he cried. "You're a liar and a hypocrite, and I've
done with you forever! That ought to be enough for you! Stand by and let
me go, or--" he raised his stick with a threatening gesture, but at that
I could afford to smile. I knew Brunow a great deal too well to think
him likely to assault me after having put me on my guard by a threat.

"I wonder," he said, with his lips quivering and his teeth tight
clinched behind them--"I wonder that I don't thrash you within an inch
of your life."

"I wouldn't waste much wonder on that question if I were you, Brunow," I
answered. "You will be able to find an easy explanation. Tell me on what
grounds you come to me with these angry accusations."

"You pretend you don't know?" he sneered. "You can't guess, you soul of
honor!"

"I pretend nothing," I told him; "but no man uses such language to me
without justifying it. A gentleman having under any fancied sense of
wrong used such language will hasten to find reasons for it."

"You may keep me here," said Brunow, throwing himself savagely into
an arm-chair. "I won't bluster with you, but I decline to explain or
justify a word I've said, and you can take what course you please."

"Very well," I answered, turning the key in the lock and then putting it
in my pocket, "we shall both have an opportunity of exercising the great
gift of patience."

"Look here," he cried, suddenly leaping from his chair and shaking his
forefinger in ray face, "do you pretend to deny that months and months
ago I told you what my feelings were with respect to Miss Rossano?"

"You told me," I answered, "that you admired her, and that she had
a very pretty little income of her own. You coupled those two facts
together in such a way as to make me think you were ready to contract a
mercenary marriage."

"That's how you choose to put it," he retorted. "I could have supposed,
without your help, that you'd find some such means of justifying
yourself. Your affection has nothing mercenary in it, of course. In that
respect you're above suspicion. A mountebank soldier with a wooden sword
to sell that nobody chooses to buy. A strolling pauper without a penny
to his name."

I don't quite like to think of what might have happened if this strain
of invective had not been interrupted at that moment. I know now, and I
almost knew then, what ground Brunow had for his anger and resentment.
But the words he used were almost too much