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.”