ms a moment nearer realization.

"After that. You determined that the sweetest vengeance would be to
frustrate my ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had silenced,
by yourself carrying forward the fantastic apostleship of equality that
was M. de Vilmorin's. You lacked the vision that would have shown you
that God did not create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night to
judge which of us was right, which wrong. You see what is happening here
in Paris. You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land
fallen into confusion. Probably you have enough imagination to conceive
something of what must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out of
this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don't
you understand that society must re-order itself presently out of all
this?

"But why say more? I must have said enough to make you understand the
only thing that really matters--that I killed M. de Vilmorin as a matter
of duty to my order. And the truth--which though it may offend you should
also convince you--is that to-night I can look back on the deed with
equanimity, without a single regret, apart from what lies between you
and me.

"When, kneeling beside the body of your friend that day at Gavrillac,
you insulted and provoked me, had I been the tiger you conceived me
I must have killed you too. I am, as you may know, a man of quick
passions. Yet I curbed the natural anger you aroused in me, because
I could forgive an affront to myself where I could not overlook a
calculated attack upon my order."

He paused a moment. Andre-Louis stood rigid listening and wondering.
So, too, the others. Then M. le Marquis resumed, on a note of less
assurance. "In the matter of Mlle. Binet I was unfortunate. I wronged
you through inadvertence. I had no knowledge of the relations between
you."

Andre-Louis interrupted him sharply at last with a question: "Would it
have made a difference if you had?"

"No," he was answered frankly. "I have the faults of my kind. I cannot
pretend that any such scruple as you suggest would have weighed with me.
But can you--if you are capable of any detached judgment--blame me very
much for that?"

"All things considered, monsieur, I am rapidly being forced to the
conclusion that it is impossible to blame any man for anything in this
world; that we are all of us the sport of destiny. Consider, monsieur,
this gathering--this family gathering--here to-night, whilst ou