Petrovski with increased
interest, as she lighted her cigarette.

"No matter, he loved her," returned the Englishman, straightening in his
seat and squaring his broad shoulders.

"And so did the poor devil whom Mercier sewed up," laughed the old
Baron, his eyes twinkling.

Mme. Constantin raised her blonde head from the edge of the divan.

"Is there any wrong, you dear Greenough, you would forgive where a woman
is concerned?"

"Plenty. Any wrong that you would commit, my dear lady, for instance;
but not the kind the Baron refers to."

"But why do you Englishmen always insist on an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth? Can't you make some allowance for the weakness of
human nature?" she asked, smiling.

"But why only Englishmen?" demanded Greenough. "All nationalities feel
alike where a man's honor and the honor of his home are concerned. It is
only the punishment that differs. The Turk, for instance, bowstrings you
or tries to, for peeping under his wife's veil; the American shoots you
at sight for speaking slightingly of his daughter. Both are right in a
way. I am not brutal; I am only just, and I tell you there is only one
way of treating a man who has robbed you dishonestly of the woman you
love, and that is to finish him so completely that the first man
called in will be the undertaker--not the surgeon. I am not talking
at random--I know a case in point, which always sets me blazing when
I think of it. He was at the time attached to our embassy at Berlin. I
hear now that he has returned to England and is dying--dying, remember,
of a broken heart--won't live the year out. He ought to have shot
the scoundrel when he had a chance. Not her fault, perhaps--not his
fault--fault of a man he trusted--that both trusted, that's the worst of
it."

Bayard sat gazing into the fire, its glow deepening the color of his
bronze cheek and bringing into high relief a body so strong and well
knit that it was difficult to believe that scarcely a year had passed
since he dragged himself, starving and half dead, from the depths of an
African jungle.

So far he had taken no part in the discussion. Mme. Constantin, who knew
his every mood, had seen his face grow grave, his lips straighten, and a
certain subdued impatience express itself in the opening and shutting of
his hands, but no word of comment had followed.

"Come, we are waiting, Bayard," she said at last, with a smile. "What do
you think of Greenough's theory?"

Th