mused audibly. "But what have you got to do with all this? It's nothing to you."
She waited for me to speak.
"Exactly, Madame," I said, "and therefore I don't see why I should concern myself in all this one way or another."
"No," she assented with a weary air, "except that you might ask yourself what is the good of tormenting a man of noble feelings, however absurd. His Southern blood makes him very violent sometimes. I fear--" And then for the first time during this conversation, for the first time since I left Dona Rita the day before, for the first time I laughed.
"Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen are dead shots? I am aware of that--from novels."
I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that exquisite, aristocratic old woman positively blink by my directness. There was a faint flush on her delicate old cheeks but she didn't move a muscle of her face. I made her a most respectful bow and went out of the studio.
