Instinctively she knew that he would draw back, and that the struggle would begin.

It might almost seem that she had invited it; for she had let the Man from Outside hold her hand for far longer than courtesy required, while her father looked on with fretful eyes--even with a murmuring which was not a benediction.

Indeed, he had evaded shaking hands with his hated visitor by suddenly offering him a cigar, and then in the doorway itself handing a lighted match.
"His eminence, Cardinal Christophe, gave these cigars to me when he passed through St.Saviour's five years ago," Jean Jacques had remarked loftily, "and I always smoke one on my birthday.

I am a good Catholic, and his eminence rested here for a whole day." He had had a grim pleasure in avoiding the handshake, and in having the Protestant outsider smoke the Catholic cigar! In his anger it seemed to him that he had done something worthy almost of the Vatican, indeed of the great Cardinal Christophe himself.

Even in his moments of crisis, in his hours of real tragedy, in the times when he was shaken to the centre, Jean Jacques fancied himself more than a little.