As envoy I may not fight him now, but I may tell you that I have
every cue to send him to hell one day. He will do me the credit
to say that it is not cowardice that stays me."
"If no coward in the way of fighting, coward in all other
things," I retorted instantly.
"Well, well, as you may think." He turned to go. "We will meet
there, then?" he said, pointing to the town. "And when?"
"To-morrow," said I.
He shrugged his shoulder as to a boyish petulance, for he thought
it an idle boast. "To-morrow? Then come and pray with me in the
cathedral, and after that we will cast up accounts--to-morrow,"
he said, with a poignant and exultant malice. A moment afterwards
he was gone, and I was left alone.
Presently I saw a boat shoot out from the shore below, and he
was in it. Seeing me, he waved a hand in an ironical way. I paced
up and down, sick and distracted, for half an hour or more. I knew
not whether he lied concerning Alixe, but my heart was wrung with
misery, for indeed he spoke with an air of truth.
Dead! dead! dead! "In no fear of your batteries now," he had
said. "Done with the world!" he had said. What else could it mean?
Yet the more I thought, there came a feeling that somehow I had
been tricked.
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