pitied!—a woman of a great, a very great character—I imagine—I imagine."
"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.
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