"You know her then?"

"Not at all. I have never seen her."

"Why, then, do you say that she is a woman of great character?"

"Because she bravely faced the murderer; because she courageously
defended herself--and, above all, because of the bullet in the
ceiling."

I looked at Rouletabille and inwardly wondered whether he was not
mocking me, or whether he had not suddenly gone out of his senses.
But I saw that he had never been less inclined to laugh, and the
brightness of his keenly intelligent eyes assured me that he
retained all his reason. Then, too, I was used to his broken way
of talking, which only left me puzzled as to his meaning, till,
with a very few clear, rapidly uttered words, he would make the
drift of his ideas clear to me, and I saw that what he had
previously said, and which had appeared to me void of meaning, was
so thoroughly logical that I could not understand how it was I had
not understood him sooner.





CHAPTER IV

"In the Bosom of Wild Nature"