welcome on her lips. He bowed low and
kissed her hand in silence.

Then with a glance and a gesture she dismissed Benoit, and in her
imperious fashion constituted herself Andre's advocate against that
harsh dismissal which she had overheard.

"Uncle," she said, leaving Andre and crossing to M. de Kercadiou, "you
make me ashamed of you! To allow a feeling of peevishness to overwhelm
all your affection for Andre!"

"I have no affection for him. I had once. He chose to extinguish it.
He can go to the devil; and please observe that I don't permit you to
interfere."

"But if he confesses that he has done wrong..."

"He confesses nothing of the kind. He comes here to argue with me about
these infernal Rights of Man. He proclaims himself unrepentant. He
announces himself with pride to have been, as all Brittany says, the
scoundrel who hid himself under the sobriquet of Omnes Omnibus. Is that
to be condoned?"

She turned to look at Andre across the wide space that now separated
them.

"But is this really so? Don't you repent, Andre--now that you see all the
harm that has come?"

It was a clear invitation to him, a pleading to him to say that he
repented, to make his peace with his godfather. For a moment it almost
moved him. Then, considering the subterfuge unworthy, he answered
truthfully, though the pain he was suffering rang in his voice.

"To confess repentance," he said slowly, "would be to confess to a
monstrous crime. Don't you see that? Oh, monsieur, have patience
with me; let me explain myself a little. You say that I am in part
responsible for something of all this that has happened. My exhortations
of the people at Rennes and twice afterwards at Nantes are said to have
had their share in what followed there. It may be so. It would be beyond
my power positively to deny it. Revolution followed and bloodshed. More
may yet come. To repent implies a recognition that I have done wrong.
How shall I say that I have done wrong, and thus take a share of the
responsibility for all that blood upon my soul? I will be quite frank
with you to show you how far, indeed, I am from repentance. What I did,
I actually did against all my convictions at the time. Because there
was no justice in France to move against the murderer of Philippe de
Vilmorin, I moved in the only way that I imagined could make the evil
done recoil upon the hand that did it, and those other hands that had
the power but not the spirit to punish. Since