Mordaunt sat and smoked as one lost in thought.  Finally, after a long silence, he looked up and spoke.

“Why this sudden hurry to dissolve partnership, Bertrand?” he asked, with his kindly smile.  “Is it this Rodolphe affair that has unsettled 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, and almost with the same movement pushed his chair back sharply out of reach.  “You should not say these things to me!” he stammered forth incoherently.  “I do not deserve them.  I am not—­I am not what you imagine.  You do not know me.  I do not know myself.  I—­I—­” He broke off in agitation and sprang impetuously to his feet.