“You say that you married her.”

“Monsieur, this is a girl.  I married a woman, a woman matured by tragedy.  The eyes that are laughing in this portrait are wiser now.  They have seen the depths of a man’s treachery.  But they have not lost their spirit, no, nor their tenderness, monsieur.  You will find little that you recognize in the woman who is now my wife.”

He kept his composure.  “You use the word ‘wife’ very glibly,” he said, with a yawn.  “Do you use it when the lady is within hearing, as you do now?”

“She is my wife.”

He laughed, for he saw he had drawn blood.  “Your wife in name, perhaps,—­I grant you that,—­but not in fact.  Do you think me blind that I should not see the two cabins.  And you said that you had never crossed the threshold of the woman’s room.  I see that I shall find my cousin the maiden that I left her, monsieur.”

I kept my lips closed.  He had indeed drawn blood.  I could not answer.  He leaned forward and tapped a significant forefinger on my knee.

“Remember, she has kissed me, monsieur.  She has kissed me often of her own will.”

And then my spirit did return.  “That does not concern me.”

He lifted his great lip.  “You are indulgent.”

The flies buzzed odiously.  The Englishman was gloating over me, his great head craned forward like a buzzard’s.  My brain took fire.

“I am not indulgent,” I said slowly, with my throat dry.  “I am wise.  She has kissed you, yes.  I have no doubt that she has kissed you many times, casually, lightly, indifferently.  She brushed the plumage of her falcon in the same way.  You are welcome to the memory of those kisses, my lord.  You may have more like them in the future, and I shall not say you nay.  They mean nothing.”

He scowled at me.  “What do you know of her kisses?” he said under his breath.

I looked him in the eye.  “I know this.  There is but one kiss that means anything from a woman, and she gives it, if she is the right kind of a woman, to but one man in her life.  For the rest,—­I value them no more than the brush of her finger-tips.  Tell me, have you felt her lips pressed to yours till her breath and her soul were one with you?  Tell me that.  Answer, I say.”

I had let the cord of reason and decency slip.  I rose, and I think that the hate in my face must have been wolfish, for the man drew back.  He tried to look contemptuous, but I saw fear in his eyes.  Fear and something more,—­a sudden pain and longing.  The emotion that heretofore he had kept well in hand trapped him for the moment.  I was answered.  The woman might never be mine, but she had never been his, either.  I turned away.  I was triumphant, but I loathed myself.  I was sick with the situation, and the man who had brought me to it.

“You may keep your kisses, monsieur,” I said savagely.  “You may keep them.  But if you mention them to me again I shall throttle you where you stand.”