My mother was pure as the angels.
Henceforth you can be only to me a slanderer who has dared to taint the one name holy in my sight." And without another word, he turned and went out of the chamber.

Yet, as the door closed, old habit was so strong on him that, even in his hot and bitter pain, and his bewildered sense of sudden outrage, he almost smiled at himself.

"It is a mania; he does not know what he says," he thought.

"How could I be so melodramatic?
We were like two men at the Porte St.Martin.Inflated language is such bad form!" But the cruel stroke had not struck the less closely home, and gentle though his nature was, beyond all forgiveness from him was the dishonor of his mother's memory..