The Comtesse shifted slightly in her chair.  “He had power,” she said thoughtfully.

The little Colonel nodded twice.  “He had power, as Madame observes.  He had many good qualities—­not quite enough, it is true, but many.  There were even those that loved him, dogs, horses, waiters, croupiers and the poor women who made up the background of his life.  I have thought, sometimes, that it is easy for a man to be loved, Madame, if he will take that responsibility.  But what befell Bertin was not commonplace.  He returned to France on leave, for six months, and it was then, I believe, that he first met the lady who became Madame Bertin?”

He gave the words the tone of a question, and the Comtesse answered with a slow gesture of assent.

“Yes, I have heard that it was so,” said the Colonel.  “Of what took place at that time I can tell nothing, naturally, and Madame is no doubt sufficiently informed.  But I saw him—­I saw them both—­within a week of their return.  Upon that occasion I dined at a hotel with two friends, Captain Vaucher and Lieutenant de Sailles.  Bertin, with some friends and his wife, was at a table near-by.  She was the only lady of the party; her place was between an Englishman, a lean, twisted man with the thin legs of a groom, and a Belgian who passed for an artist.  It was de Sailles who pointed them out; and in effect it was a group to see with emotion.  The lady—­she was known to you, Madame?  Then the position will be clear.  She was of that complete and perfect type we honor as the Parisienne, a product of the most complex life in the world.  She was slender and straight—­ah! straight as a lance, with youth and spirit and buoyancy in the carriage of her head, the poise of her body, the color upon her cheeks.  But it was not that—­ the beauty and the courage—­that caused her to stand out among those men as a climbing rose stands out from an old wall; it was the schooled and perfected quality of her, the fineness and delicacy of her manner and expression, the—­in short, the note of breeding, Madame, the unmistakable ensign of caste.  The Englishman fidgeted and lounged beside her; the fat Belgian drank much and was boisterous; Bertin was harsh and rudely jovial and loud.  It was as though she were enveloped in a miasma.”

“‘So that is what Bertin has brought back,’ said Vaucher slowly, as his custom was.”

“‘It is a crime,’ said de Sailles.”

“‘I wonder,’ said Vaucher, and drank his wine.  He was much my friend, a man with the courage and innocence of a good child; but his thought was not easy to follow.  He gave Bertin’s group another look under puckered brows, and then turned his back on it and began to talk of other matters.  I might have known then that—­but I must tell my tale in order.”