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Updated: October 3, 2025
And, that precisely in the hour of peace, the hour of politic insurance against accident, this accident of all others should befall her, was maddening! But anger did not lessen her perspicacity. How to inflict the maximum of discomfort upon M. Destournelle with the minimum of risk to herself was the question. An interview was inevitable.
And alongside Death by some malign association of ideas and ugly antic of profanity she saw the bel tête de Jesu of M. Paul Destournelle as she had seen it this morning, he looking back, hat in hand, as he plunged down the break-neck, Neapolitan side-street, with that impish, bleating, goatlike laugh.
So, leisurely, and with studied ignorance of his presence, she flung largesse of centissimi to right and left, and, while the chorus of blessing and entreaty was yet loud, walked calmly past M. Destournelle down the wide, shallow steps, from the solid shadow of the portico to the burning sun-glare of the piazza. The young man's countenance went livid.
"Look, M. Destournelle," Helen said very quietly, "this is my cousin of whom I have already spoken to you. But I wished to spare him if possible, and give him room for self-justification, so I did not tell you all. Richard, this is my friend, M. Destournelle, to whom my honour and happiness are not wholly indifferent." Dickie looked up. He did not speak.
The existence of one would have constituted a reflection upon my charms. But a matter of ten, fifteen, twenty, ceases to be in any degree personal to myself. Only I object to Destournelle. He is too young, too rococco. He represents a descent in the scale. I prefer des hommes mures, generals, ministers, princes. The devil knows we have had our share of such!
Yet it would appear that abstract justice judged less leniently of the position. For, passing out on to the portico about the base of whose enormous columns half-naked beggars clustered, exposing sores and mutilations, shrilly clamouring for alms the dazzling glare of the empty, sun-scorched piazza behind him, Helen came face to face with no less a personage than M. Paul Destournelle.
The meaning of them mattered but little just then. They freed one from the tyranny of more or less disgusting fact. They satisfied eye and ear. One asked nothing more just then luckily, you will say, since the animal Destournelle has very surely nothing more to give." In speaking, Helen pushed her chair back, turning it sideways to the table.
"Paul, M. Destournelle, come here," she cried, "and at once!" But Richard was more than ever tired. The strain of waiting had been too prolonged. Lights, draperies, figures, the crowded arena, the vast honeycomb of boxes, tier above tier, swam before his eyes, blurred, indistinct, vague, shifting, colossal in height, giddy in depth.
Richard Calmady's affections were, as she feared, still wholly given. That her relation to him was innocent, filled her with humiliation. First she turned to Zélie Forestier, who had followed at a discreet distance across the piazza. "Go on," she said, "down the street. Find a cab, a clean one. Wait in it for me at the bottom of the hill." Then she turned upon M. Destournelle.
Paul Destournelle bent down and again examined him curiously. "C'est etonnant!" he repeated. He gave the prostrate body a contemptuous kick. "Dear madame, are you sufficiently avenged? Is it enough?" he inquired sneeringly. And vaguely, as from some incalculable distance, Richard heard Helen de Vallorbes' voice: "Yes it is a little affair of honour which dates from my childhood.
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