ore binding. Is
it not so, general?"

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans
looked at each other. Later in the day when they found themselves alone,
out of their moody friend's earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly:

"Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far or even a little
farther than most people. But this beats me. He won't say anything."

"In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last
always something that no one in the army could quite make out," declared
the chasseur with the imperfect nose. "In mystery it began, in mystery
it went on, and in mystery it is to end apparently...."

General D'Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means
uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, but it did not seem
to him he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before he had
grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent, worthy
of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl's love. He had even
moments when by a marvellous illusion this love seemed to him already
his and his threatened life a still more magnificent opportunity of
devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost it special
magnificence. It wore instead a specially alarming aspect as a snare for
the exposure of unworthiness. As to the marvellous illusion of conquered
love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the
night which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its
true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to
this man sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed
of much of its charm simply because it was no longer menaced.

Approaching the house from the back through the orchard and the kitchen
gardens, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front. He
never met a single soul. Only upstairs, while walking softly along the
corridor, he became aware that the house was awake and much more noisy
than usual. Names of servants were being called out down below in a
confused noise of coming and going. He noticed with some concern that
the door of his own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been
opened yet. He had hoped that his early excursion would have passed
unperceived. He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the
sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying
on the low divan something bulky which h