Jim Frobisher made up his mind to say the things which he had almost said at the beginning of this interview.
"I shall tell Monsieur Bex exactly what you have told me. I shall give him every assistance that I personally or my firm can give. But I have no longer any formal connection with the defence."
Hanaud looked at Frobisher in perplexity.
"I don't understand, Monsieur. This is not the moment to renounce a client."
"Nor do I," rejoined Frobisher. "It is the other way about. Monsieur Bex put it to me very—how shall I say?"
Hanaud supplied the missing word with a twitch of his lips.
"Very correctly."
"He told me that Mademoiselle did not wish to see me again."
Hanaud walked over to the window. The humiliation evident in Frobisher's voice and face moved him. He said very gently, "I can understand that, can't you? She has fought for a great stake all this last week, her liberty, her fortune, her good name—and you. Oh, yes," he continued, as Jim stirred at the table. "Let us be frank! And you, Monsieur! You were a little different from her friends. From the earliest moment she set her passions upon you. Do you remember the first morning I came to the Maison Crenelle? You promised Ann Upcott to put up there though you had just refused the same invitation from Betty Harlowe. Such a fury of jealousy blazed in her eyes, that I had to drop my stick with a clatter in the hall lest she should recognise that I could not but have discovered her secret. Well, having fought for this stake and lost, she would not wish to see you. You had seen her, too, in her handcuffs and tied by the legs like a sheep. I understand her very well."
Jim Frobisher remembered that from the moment Hanaud burst into the room at the Hôtel de Brebizart, Betty had never once even looked at him. He got up from his chair and took up his hat and stick.