"She sent me away once, and I don't particularly care for the Cairo idea."
"This time she will not send you away." Jusseret glanced up with a bland smile. "And it seems I remember a season, not so many years gone, when you were a rather prominent personage upon the terrace of Shephard's. You were quite an engaging figure of a man, Monsieur Martin, in flannels and Panama hat, quite a smart figure!"
The Englishman scowled. "You delight, Monsieur, in touching the raw spots—However, I daresay matters will go rippingly." He took the bills and counted them into his own purse. "A chap can't afford to be too sentimental or thin-skinned." He was thinking of a couple of clubs in Cairo from which he had been asked to resign. Then he laughed callously as he added aloud: "You see there's a regiment stationed there, just now, which I'd rather not meet. I used to belong to its mess—once upon a time."
Jusseret looked up at the renegade, then with a cynical laugh he rose.
"These little matters are inconvenient," he admitted, "but embarrassments beset one everywhere. If one turns aside to avoid his old regiment, who knows but he may meet his tailor insistent upon payment—or the lady who was once his wife?"
He lighted a cigarette, then with the refined cruelty that enjoyed torturing a victim who could not afford to resent his brutality, he added:
"But these army regulations are extremely annoying, I daresay—these rules which proclaim it infamous to recognize one who—who has, under certain circumstances, ceased to be a brother-officer."
The Englishman was leaning across the table, his cheek-bones red and his eyes dangerous.
"By God, Jusseret, don't go too far!" he cautioned.
The Frenchman raised his hands in an apologetic gesture, but his eyes still held a trace of the malevolent smile.