“It’s the truth; I couldn’t!”
I laughed sceptically; and he flinched, but repeated that what he had said was only the truth. “I don’t understand; it was all beyond me,” he added huskily.
“What was it you said to her?”
“I spoke her name—‘Madame d’Armand.’”
“You said more than that!”
“I asked her if she would let me see her again.”
“What else?”
“Nothing,” he answered humbly. “And then she—then for a moment it seemed—for a moment she didn’t seem to be able to speak—”
“I should think not!” I shouted, and burst out at him with satirical laughter. He stood patiently enduring it, his lowered eyes following the aimless movements of his hands, which were twisting and untwisting his flexible straw hat; and it might have struck me as nearer akin to tragedy rather than to a thing for laughter: this spectacle of a grown man so like a schoolboy before the master, shamefaced over a stammered confession.
“But she did say something to you, didn’t she?” I asked finally, with the gentleness of a cross-examining lawyer.