ou have a love of fighting?"

"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time. "Sometimes
I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was obliged; one must try
to be a gentleman. But won't you have some more?"

I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture of
the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase, one hand
pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little white moustaches,
and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a step there at the
corner."

"To be a gentleman!" I repeated in the street, causing an old French
lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood bowing
and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best feeling.

II

A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert. In the
meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing. He seemed
depressed. The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned cheeks had
a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two numbers of the
programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his hat, "Do you ever have
bad days? Yes? Not pleasant, are they?"

Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you followed.
There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of those romances,
crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you will, which had just
attracted the "world's" stare. She passed us with her partner, and sat
down in a chair a few rows to our right. She kept turning her head round,
and at every turn I caught the gleam of her uneasy eyes. Some one behind
us said: "The brazen baggage!"

My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
spoken. The change in him was quite remarkable. His lips were drawn
back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.

"Ah!" he said to me. "The hue and cry! Contemptible! How I hate it!
But you wouldn't understand--!" he broke off, and slowly regained his
usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying
to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had
robbed them of neatness.

"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
began reading his programme, holding it upside down. A minute later,
however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found who
object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman, who minds
that? Will you tell