"So that you believe it now," said Andre quickly. "Why?"
"I have not said that I believe it now. But... but... neither can I disbelieve. Since we came to Meudon M. de La Tour d'Azyr has been here, and himself he has sworn to me that it was so."
"Oh, if M. de La Tour d'Azyr has sworn..." Andre-Louis was laughing on a bitter note of sarcasm.
"Have you ever known him lie?" she cut in sharply. That checked him. "M. de La Tour d'Azyr is, after all, a man of honour, and men of honour never deal in falsehood. Have you ever known him do so, that you should sneer as you have done?"
"No," he confessed. Common justice demanded that he should admit that virtue at least in his enemy. "I have not known him lie, it is true. His kind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth. But I have known him do things as vile..."
"Nothing is as vile," she interrupted, speaking from the code by which she had been reared. "It is for liars only--who are first cousin to thieves--that there is no hope. It is in falsehood only that there is real loss of honour."
"You are defending that satyr, I think," he said frostily.
"I desire to be just."
"Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shall have resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr." He spoke bitterly.
"I don't think that I shall ever take that resolve."
"But you are still not sure--in spite of everything."
"Can one ever be sure of anything in this world?"
"Yes. One can be sure of being foolish."
Either she did not hear or did not heed him.
"You do not of your own knowledge know that it was not as M. de La Tour d'Azyr asserts--that he went to the Feydau that night?"
"I don't," he admitted. "It is of course possible. But does it matter?"
"It might matter. Tell me; what became of La Binet after all?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" She turned to consider him. "And you can say it with that indifference! I thought... I thought you loved her, Andre."
"So did I, for a little while. I was mistaken. It required a La Tour d'Azyr to disclose the truth to me. They have their uses, these gentlemen. They help stupid fellows like myself to perceive important truths. I was fortunate that revelation in my case preceded marriage. I can now look back upon the episode with equanimity and thankfulness for my near escape from the consequences of what was no more than an aberration of the senses. It is a thing commonly confused with love. The experience, as you see, was very instructive."