w young you are," he said. "A blind man, of
course, is nothing to you. You give him an alms, touching his hand
when you put the money into it, and go on to the club to play bridge.
But if I, by any chance of the street, were to touch a blind man, I
should go home and go to bed. I have my share of prudence me! and
that is a risk I do not take. No!"

He interrupted himself to drink from his glass, while Dupontel sat
back and prepared, with a gesture of utter impatience, to be
contemptuous and argumentative.

"Carigny," said the Prince, setting his glass down, "Carigny, in the
old days, believed that too. But he was not prudent. That night we
played, that last night of which he writes in his letter, there was a
blind man who begged of him. And when he would have dropped a franc
in his hand, the creature groped suddenly for the coin. We were
walking to the club together, and I saw it, standing aside meanwhile.
It was an old debris of a man, who begged in a voice that whispered
and croaked, and his hand was shriveled and purple, and it wavered
and trembled as he held it out. Because he was blind, with eyelids
swollen and discolored, Carigny said, as he drew the money from his
pocket: 'Here is a franc, my friend!' Then the old creature groped,
as I have said, with a jerk of his inhuman claw, and grabbed the
money from Carigny before he could let it fall, and I saw their hands
touch. Carigny would not have played that night but that we had
appointed to play."

"You could have let him off till next day," said Dupontel.

The Prince shook his head. "In those times," he said, "it was not the
custom to break one's engagements neither to break them nor to allow
them to be broken."

"I should like to see this Carigny of yours," said Dupontel
thoughtfully. "When do you expect him to call on you?"

"His letter says 'as soon as possible,'" answered the Prince. "That
constitutes in itself an engagement which Carigny will not fail to
keep. He will come this afternoon."

Their meal achieved itself perfectly, like a ritual There arrived the
time when the Prince set down his tiny coffee-cup and leaned back
detachedly, while the waiter with the bill went through his
celebrated impersonation of a man receiving a favor. Together they
passed out between the great glass doors to the street.

"You will walk?" inquired Dupontel.

"As usual," said the Prince. It was his custom to pass the time
between lunch and the hour when he was likel