She glanced at him after a little to ascertain whether smile or frown had supervened. But both were gone. He looked back at her gravely, though without reproof.
"Poor little one!" he said. "It frightened you, no?"
She drew a deep breath. "Oh, Bertie, what were you doing?"
"But why? You might--you might have killed him! Perhaps you have!"
He stiffened slightly, and twisted one end of his small moustache. "I think not," he said, faint regret in his voice.
Chris thought not too, judging by the clamour of invective which the injured man had managed to pour forth. But for some reason she pressed the point.
He shrugged his shoulders with extreme deliberation.
"_Alors_, Mademoiselle Christine, there would have been one _canaille_ the less in the world."
She was a little shocked at the cool rejoinder, yet could not somehow feel that her _preux chevalier_ could be in the wrong.
"He might have killed you," she remarked after a moment, determined to survey the matter from every standpoint. "I am sure he meant to."
He shrugged his shoulders again and laughed. "That is quite possible. And you would have been sorry--a little--no?"
She raised her clear eyes to his. "You know I should have been heart-broken," she said, with the utmost simplicity.
"But really," she repeated, breaking into a smile. "Now do promise me that you will never fight that horrid man again."
He spread out his hands. "How can I promise you such a thing! It is not the fashion in France to suffer insults in silence."
Again he stiffened. "He insulted me--yes. And I, I struck him. _Après cela_--" again the expressive shrug, and no more.
"But how did he insult you?" persisted Chris. "Couldn't you have just turned your back, as one would in England?"
"No" Sternly he made reply. "I could not--turn my back."
"It's ever so much more dignified," she maintained.
The dark eyes flashed. "Pardon!" he said. "There are some insults upon which no man, English or French, can with honour turn the back."
That fired her curiosity. "It was something pretty bad, then? What was it, Bertie? Tell me!"
"I cannot tell you," he returned, quite courteously but with the utmost firmness.
She glanced at him again speculatively, then, with shrewdness: "When men fight duels," she said, "it's generally over either politics or--a woman. Was it--politics, Bertie?"