Too late he had remembered his promise.
The big man leaned forward.

"What may we be ?" he asked.

"You were going, I think, to say that we might be--that we might be----" But Claude did not answer.

He was passing through a moment of such misery as he had never experienced.

To give way to them now, to lower his flag before them after he had challenged them! To abandon her to them, to see her--oh, it was more than he could do, more than he could suffer! It was---- "Pray go on," Basterga sneered, "if you have not said your say.