Duroy, deeming the explanation satisfactory, did not persist. Daddy
Walter embraced him, saying: "Bravo, bravo, you have defended the colors
of _Vie Francaise_; bravo!"
George showed himself in the course of the evening at the principal
newspaper offices, and at the chief _cafes_ on the boulevards. He twice
encountered his adversary, who was also showing himself. They did not
bow to one another. If one of them had been wounded they would have
shaken hands. Each of them, moreover, swore with conviction that he had
heard the whistling of the other's bullet.
The next day, at about eleven, Duroy received a telegram. "Awfully
alarmed. Come at once. Rue de Constantinople.--Clo."
He hastened to their meeting-place, and she threw herself into his arms,
smothering him with kisses.
"Oh, my darling! if you only knew what I felt when I saw the papers this
morning. Oh, tell me all about it! I want to know everything."
He had to give minute details. She said: "What a dreadful night you must
have passed before the duel."
"No, I slept very well."
"I should not have closed an eye. And on the ground--tell me all that
happened."
He gave a dramatic account. "When we were face to face with one another
at twenty paces, only four times the length of this room, Jacques, after
asking if we were ready, gave the word 'Fire.' I raised my arm at once,
keeping a good line, but I made the mistake of trying to aim at the
head. I had a pistol with an unusually stiff pull, and I am accustomed
to very easy ones, so that the resistance of the trigger caused me to
fire too high. No matter, it could not have gone very far off him. He
shoots well, too, the rascal. His bullet skimmed by my temple. I felt
the wind of it."
She was sitting on his knees, and holding him in her arms as though to
share his dangers. She murmured: "Oh, my poor darling! my poor darling!"
When he had finished his narration, she said: "Do you know, I cannot
live without you. I must see you, and with my husband in Paris it is not
easy. Often I could find an hour in the morning before you were up to
run in and kiss you, but I won't enter that awful house of yours. What
is to be done?"