Have you ever known him do so,
that you should sneer as you have done?"
"No," he confessed. Common justice demanded that he should admit
that virtue at least in his enemy. "I have not known him lie, it
is true. His kind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have
recourse to untruth. But I have known him do things as vile... "
"Nothing is as vile," she interrupted, speaking from the code by
which she had been reared. "It is for liars only - who are first
cousin to thieves - that there is no hope. It is in falsehood only
that there is real loss of honour."
"You are defending that satyr, I think," he said frostily.
"I desire to be just."
"Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shall
have resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr." He
spoke bitterly.
"I don't think that I shall ever take that resolve."
"But you are still not sure - in spite of everything."
"Can one ever be sure of anything in this world?"
"Yes. One can be sure of being foolish."
Either she did not hear or did not heed him.
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