nocking at your door--at this door of honor--I should hear
the truth, that I would touch it as I touch this object," and he laid his
hand upon a marble bust on the table.

"You see I hear it like a man. You can speak to me now. Who knows?
Disgust is a great cure for passion. I will listen to you. Do not spare
me!"

"You are mistaken, Gorka," replied Dorsenne. "What I have to say to you,
I can say very simply. I was, and I am, convinced that in a quarter of an
hour, in an hour, tomorrow, the day after, you will consider me a liar or
an imbecile. But, since you misinterpreted my silence, it is my duty to
speak, and I do so. I give you my word of honor I have never had the
least suspicion of a connection between Madame Steno and Maitland, nor
have their relations seemed changed to me for a second since your
absence. I give you my word of honor that no one, do you hear, no one has
spoken of it to me. And, now, act as you please, think as you please. I
have said all I can say."

The novelist uttered those words with a feverish energy which was caused
by the terrible strain he was making upon his conscience. But Gorka's
laugh had terrified him so much the more as at the same instant the
jealous lover's disengaged hand was voluntarily or involuntarily extended
toward the weapon which gleamed upon the couch. The vision of an
immediate catastrophe, this time inevitable, rose before Julien. His lips
had spoken, as his arm would have been out stretched, by an irresistible
instinct, to save several lives, and he had made the false statement, the
first and no doubt the last in his life, without reflecting. He had no
sooner uttered it than he experienced such an excess of anger that he
would at that moment almost have preferred not to be believed. It would
indeed have been a comfort to him if his visitor had replied by one of
those insulting negations which permit one man to strike another, so
great was his irritation. On the contrary, he saw the face of Madame
Steno's lover turned toward him with an expression of gratitude upon it.
Boleslas's lips quivered, his hands were clasped, two large tears gushed
from his burning eyes and rolled down his cheeks. When he was able to
speak, he moaned:

"Ah, my friend, how much good you have done me! From what a nightmare you
have relieved me. Ah! Now I am saved! I believe you, I believe you. You
are intimate with them. You see them every day. If there had been
anything between them you woul