"How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?"

He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were so many
arrows, the points of which remained sticking in him.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your not believing it doesn't affect the
truth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the place when it
happened. And you may despise rumour as you will, my experience is, a
report never springs up that hasn't some basis of fact to go
on--however small."

He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that came to his
lips; of what use was it to make himself still more ridiculous in her
eyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he picked it up, and brushed it
on his sleeve, without knowing what he did. "Oh, well, of
course, if you think that," he said as coolly as he was able, "nothing
I could say would make any difference. Every one is free to his
opinions, I suppose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine"--he
grew hot in spite of himself. "You have been her friend, you say; you
have known her intimately; and yet just because she . . . she cares for
this fellow in such a way that she sets caring for him above being
cautious--why, not one woman in a thousand would have the courage for
that sort of thing! It needs courage, not to mind what people--no, what
your friends imagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do.
Besides, one has only to look at her to see how absurd it is. That
face and--I don't know her, Madeleine; I've never spoken to her, and
never may, yet I am absolutely certain that what is said about her
isn't true. So certain that--But after all, if this is what you think
about . . . about it, then all I have to say is, we had better not