D'Hubert, with an innocent laugh, “I think you ought to be. I had no end of trouble to find out where you were. It wasn't exactly the place for you to disport yourself in under the circumstances. If the general had caught you there making eyes at the goddess of the temple.... Oh, my word!... He hates to be bothered with complaints against his officers, you know. And it looked uncommonly like sheer bravado.”
The two officers had arrived now at the street door of Lieutenant Feraud's lodgings. The latter turned toward his companion. “Lieutenant D'Hubert,” he said, “I have something to say to you which can't be said very well in the street. You can't refuse to come in.”
The pretty maid had opened the door. Lieutenant Feraud brushed past her brusquely and she raised her scared, questioning eyes to Lieutenant D'Hubert, who could do nothing but shrug his shoulders slightly as he followed with marked reluctance.
In his room Lieutenant Feraud unhooked the clasp, flung his new dolman on the bed, and folding his arms across his chest, turned to the other hussar.
“Do you imagine I am a man to submit tamely to injustice?” he inquired in a boisterous voice.
“Oh, do be reasonable,” remonstrated Lieutenant D'Hubert.
“I am reasonable. I am perfectly reasonable,” retorted the other, ominously lowering his voice. “I can't call the general to account for his behaviour, but you are going to answer to me for yours.”
“I can't listen to this nonsense,” murmured Lieutenant D'Hubert, making a slightly contemptuous grimace.
“You call that nonsense. It seems to me perfectly clear. Unless you don't understand French.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean,” screamed suddenly Lieutenant Feraud, “to cut off your ears to teach you not to disturb me, orders or no orders, when I am talking to a lady.”
A profound silence followed this mad declaration—and through the open window Lieutenant D'Hubert heard the little birds singing sanely in the garden. He said coldly:
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