led you?
Because surely it would be wiser to wait and see what is going to happen
before you take any decided step of this sort."

"Ah! It is not that!" Bertrand spoke with a vehemence that sounded almost
passionate. "It is nothing to me--this affair. It interests me--not
that!" He snapped his fingers contemptuously. "No, no! The time for that
is past. What is honour, or dishonour, to me now--me who have been down
to the lowest abyss and who have learned the true value of what the world
calls great? Once--I admit it--I was young; I suffered. Now I am old,
and--I laugh!"

Yet there was a note that was more suggestive of heartbreak than of mirth
in his voice. He applied himself feverishly to extracting a letter from
an envelope, while Mordaunt sat and gravely watched him.

Suddenly, but very quietly, Mordaunt rose, strolled across, and took the
fluttering paper out of his hands. "Bertrand!" he said.

The Frenchman looked up sharply, almost as if he would resent the action,
but something in the steady eyes that met his own altered the course of
his emotions. He leaned back in his chair with the gesture of a man
confronting the inevitable.

Mordaunt sat down on the edge of the writing-table, face to face with
him. "Tell me why you want to leave me," he said.

There was determination in his attitude, determination in the very
coolness of his speech. It was quite obvious that he meant to have an
answer.

Bertrand contemplated him with a faint, rueful smile. "But what shall I
say?" he protested. "You English are so persistent. You will not be
content with the simple truth. You demand always--something more."

"There you are mistaken," Mordaunt made grave reply. "It is the simple
truth that I want--nothing more."

"_Ciel_!" Bertrand jumped in his chair as if he had been stabbed in the
back. "You insult me!"

Mordaunt's hand came out to him instantly and reassuringly. "My dear
fellow, I never insult anyone. It is not my way."

"But you do not believe me!" Bertrand protested. "And that is an
insult--that."

"I believe you absolutely." Very quietly Mordaunt made answer. The hand
he would not take was laid with great kindness on his shoulder. "I happen
to know you too well to do otherwise. Why, man," he began to smile a
little, "if all the world turned false, I should still believe in you."

"_Tiens_!" The word was almost a cry. Bertrand shook the friendly hand
from his shoulder as if it had been some evil thing, an