I shut the door.
"My intrusion is most impertinent," said I."You have every right to resent it." "Oh, have I the right to resent anything?
Did you think so this morning ?" she asked impetuously.
"The morning," I observed, "is a terribly righteous time with me.

I must beg your pardon for what I said." "You think the same still ?" she retorted quickly.
"That is no excuse for having said it," I returned.

"It was not my affair." "It is nobody's affair, I suppose, but mine." "Unless you allow it to be," said I.I could not endure the desolation her words and tone implied.
She looked at me curiously.
"I don't understand," she said in a fretfully weary tone, "how you come to be mixed up in it at all." "It's a long story." Then I went on abruptly: "You thought it was someone else that had entered." "Well, if I did ?" "Someone returning," said I stepping up to the table opposite her.
"What then ?" she asked, but wearily and not in the defiant manner of the morning.
"Mme.

Delhasse perhaps, or perhaps the Duke of Saint-Maclou ?" Marie Delhasse made no answer.

She sat with her elbows on the table, and her chin resting on the support of her clenched hands; her lids drooped over her eyes; and I could not see the expression of her glance, which was, nevertheless, upon me.
"Well, well," I continued, "we needn't talk about him.