its pitch, and then: "André!" And this time a note almost of gladness, certainly of welcome, was blended with the surprise that still remained.
Both turned, half the room between them at the moment, and beheld Aline in one of the long, open windows, arrested there in the act of entering from the garden, Aline in a milk-maid bonnet of the latest mode, though without any of the tricolour embellishments that were so commonly to be seen upon them.
The thin lips of André's long mouth twisted into a queer smile. Into his mind had flashed the memory of their last parting. He saw himself again, standing burning with indignation upon the pavement of Nantes, looking after her carriage as it receded down the Avenue de Gigan.
She was coming towards him now with outstretched hands, a heightened colour in her cheeks, a smile of welcome on her lips. He bowed low and kissed her hand in silence.
Then with a glance and a gesture she dismissed Bénoît, and in her imperious fashion constituted herself André's advocate against that harsh dismissal which she had overheard.
"Uncle," she said, leaving André and crossing to M. de Kercadiou, "you make me ashamed of you! To allow a feeling of peevishness to overwhelm all your affection for André!"
"I have no affection for him. I had once. He chose to extinguish it. He can go to the devil; and please observe that I don't permit you to interfere."
"But if he confesses that he has done wrong..."
"He confesses nothing of the kind. He comes here to argue with me about these infernal Rights of Man. He proclaims himself unrepentant. He announces himself with pride to have been, as all Brittany says, the scoundrel who hid himself under the sobriquet of Omnes Omnibus. Is that to be condoned?"
She turned to look at Andre across the wide space that now separated them.
"But is this really so? Don't you repent, André—now that you see all the harm that has come?"
