Mauprat
me!" I cried. "Confess, now; didn't you treat me brutally? Wasn't it a coward's work, that?"
He made a movement of surprise.
"Oh, children, children!" he said. "See how the thing reasons! Out of the mouths of children cometh truth."
And he moved away dreamily, and muttering to himself as was his wont. Marcasse took off his hat to me, and said in an impassive tone:
"He is wrong . . . live at peace . . . pardon . . . peace . . . farewell!"
They disappeared; and there ended my relations with Patience. I did not come in contact with him again until long afterward.
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