For a few minutes she looked at him silently, with fixed gaze, taking in
the full measure of his meaning.

"That's folly," she said at last.

"Is it? Not for me. It might be for some people, but--not for me. You
must remember who I am. I'm a Frenchman. I'm an aristocrat. I'm a
Bienville. I'm a member of a class, of a clan, that lives and breathes
on--honor. I can do without almost everything in the world but that. I
can do without money, I can do without morals, I can do without most
kinds of common honesty, I can do without nearly all the Christian
virtues, and still keep my place among my friends; but I can't do
without that particular shade of conduct which they and I understand by
the word honor."

"But aren't you doing without it as it is?"

"No; because there again our code is special to ourselves. With us the
crime is not in suspicion or supposition; it isn't even in detection.
It's in admission. It's in confession. All sorts of things may be
thought of you, and said of you, and even known of you, and you can
bluff them out; but when you have acknowledged them--you're doomed."

"Even so, isn't it better to acknowledge them--and _be_ doomed?"

"That's the question. That's what I have to decide. That's where you
must help me decide. If you had allowed me, I should have made up my own
mind, on my own responsibility; but you won't let me. Now that the
incident at Lakefield is no good as evidence, I see that you will never
rest until we come to the plainest of plain speech. The problem I've had
to solve is this: Is Diane Eveleth to be happy, or am I? Is she to rise
while I go under, or shall I keep her down and stay on the surface?
Since it's her life or mine, which is it to be? The alternative may be a
brutal one, but there it is."

"And you've decided in your own favor?"

"So far. I've been actuated by the instinct of self-preservation."

"And are you going to persist in it?"

"That's for you to tell me. But I should like to remind you first of
this, that if I don't--I go."

"And what if--if I went with you?"

"You couldn't. The journey would be too long."

"But you needn't go so far if I'm there."

"I couldn't take you with me. You must understand that. I once knew an
American girl who married a man who cheated at cards, and buried herself
alive with him. I wouldn't let a woman do that for me."

"But if she wanted to?"

"In that case she ought to be protected from herself. There's no use in
ru