However, You will hear from me again” (“vous aurez de mes nouvelles” — the conversation had been carried on wholly in French), was his concluding remark.

To this I replied, “I shall be delighted,” with an infusion of as much hauteur as I could muster into my tone. Then, turning on my heel, I returned with my cigarette — which had meanwhile gone out — to our own room.

I said nothing, either to my brother or my friends, about what had happened (and the more so because they were at that moment engaged in a dispute of their own), but sat down in a corner to think over the strange affair.

The words, “You are a cad, young sir,” vexed me more and more the longer that they sounded in my